Time and Distance
by northernexposure
Summary: How far does one have to go to find the way back? Set season six, a while post Equinox.
1. Chapter 1

**Time and Distance**

How far does one have to go to find the way back? Set season six, sometime post _Equinox._

 **A/N:** This is intended as a small gift for MissyHissy3, who will know why. Unbeta'd, and I'll be honest: I'm not entirely sure it'll work.

* * *

 **One**

The repeating beep penetrated the shallow waters of her dream. Vague images fled as instantly as the sleep that had surrounded them, already as nebulous as the shades of distant stars outside her window even as her eyes flicked open. _Not a red alert_ , her brain detected barely a second later, although by then her muscles were awake anyway, already tense, her body on high alert even if it had turned out that the ship wasn't. She stared at the ceiling of her quarters for another five seconds, heart recovering from the assumption of attack as she worked it out, realising at last that the sound was announcing an incoming commline: a subspace message, not an internal one. It was routing straight to the comm. terminal in her quarters rather than via the bridge.

 _Chakotay._

Another five seconds and she was on her feet, reaching for her wrap, throwing it around her shoulders as she made for her terminal, hand dragging through her hair. When she spoke she realised that her voice was just as tangled by sleep.

"Computer, open channel. Audio only."

A single bleep announced the computer's compliance, followed by a sliver of silence describing the tether that now connected them via the void.

"Commander?" Janeway prompted, taking her seat.

"Captain." The familiar cadence of his voice slid into her room, crystal clear. Beside her, yet light years away.

"What's happened?" she asked, "Is your team in danger? Give us your current coordinates, Tuvok will change course immediately."

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"We're fine, Captain."

"Oh." She felt some of the tension seep away and sat back a little in her chair, taking a second to clear her throat. "Then… why the late call?"

There was another pause. "Late, Captain?"

Janeway turned her head, wondering for a moment if she was actually the one in the wrong. Her chronograph stood on the ledge beside her rumpled bed, its red display reading the current time on board ship.

"It's 03:00 hours on _Voyager_ , Chakotay."

A brief and quickly muffled curse emanated from subspace. "I'm sorry. I must have misjudged the lag. I thought Alpha shift would have only been finished for an hour or so."

"Little longer than that, Commander."

"I woke you," he realised. "At least… I hope I did."

She smiled a little at that. "You did."

"That explains the audio only," he added.

Janeway looked at her hands, fingers entwined on the desk before her, at the soft folds in the crossed cuffs of her grey silk robe. "Quite."

"Please forgive the intrusion, Captain," her first officer said, discomfort entering his voice. "It was a foolish mistake. I'll be sure to double check in future."

Janeway felt a yawn building and fought to control it. "It's not a problem, Commander. Just out of interest, what time is it there?"

There was another pause. "Just after 0200 hours."

She raised an eyebrow to the dark. "Been out burning the midnight oil with your hosts, Chakotay?"

"No, Captain," he said, the faint trace of a smile in his voice. "I've… been having trouble sleeping." She could almost imagine his shrug. "I suppose the lag's affecting me, too."

"I see," Janeway said. "You have my sympathy - and my company, too, apparently. So what were you calling about?"

"I should let you get back to sleep."

"No need," she told him. "I doubt I'll sleep now anyway."

"I'm truly sorry."

She waved a dismissive hand, though he couldn't see it. "It wasn't deliberate. Tell me why you're calling."

He cleared his throat. "Nothing specific. Just to update you on our progress."

Janeway got up and crossed to the replicator. "Green tea, hot," she said, before raising her voice to him, "I've been getting your team's reports, Commander."

"I know," he said, as she returned to her seat. It seemed to her that his voice had become quieter.

"There was something you wanted to add?" she queried, sipping at her drink. Not her usual choice, but not even she would go for black coffee at this hour and still hope to sleep. _More's the pity_. She grimaced at the tea.

"Not really," he told her. "But this is what we used to do. Isn't it?"

Janeway paused, the mug suspended halfway between her lips and her desk. The silence stretched, a multitude of shared understanding surfing the narrow band of open space that was currently their only connection.

"I'll let you get back to sleep, Captain," Chakotay said, into the silence, his voice once again clipped back into formality. "Again, apologies for having disturbed you needlessly. You'll have my team's daily report by 0700 hours, as usual. Chakotay out."

A beep signalled that he'd severed the subspace link. Janeway put down the mug. She stared at the surface of the liquid within for a moment, her fingers still curled around its handle. Then she stood and, taking it with her, went back to bed.

[TBC]


	2. Chapter 2

**Two**

* * *

He couldn't remember the last time he had gone to sleep without the stars glimmering directly above him. It must be years. Chakotay lay on his bed in the chamber the Ellenial had given him, staring at the blank ceiling of his perfectly comfortable room and willing his mind to let him sleep. He'd already cycled through the meditation techniques that would usually send him into a restful night, but for some reason this time nothing seemed to work. He was resolutely awake. Tiresomely so. Tonight he'd even left the sliding doors to his balcony open, hoping that the sound of the waves from the ocean below the cliff edge on which this city was built would lull him to sleep, but to no avail.

With a sigh, Chakotay pushed himself up, shifting his pillows so that he could lean against the wall behind him. Then he reached for the PADD he'd put down just half an hour before, following his last attempt to sleep. If he was going to be awake, he may as well read.

The PADD beeped as he picked it up. He looked at the screen, which flashed with the announcement that a subspace call from _Voyager_ was awaiting his attention. Chakotay frowned to himself.

"Chakotay here," he said aloud, activating the line. There was a second's pause, as if the caller had not been expecting so swift an answer.

"Commander." The gravel of Janeway's voice was not diminished by its passage through subspace. "Did I wake you?"

"No, Captain."

"Pity," she said, drily. "I was rather hoping for payback."

Chakotay felt a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I'm sorry to disappoint. Though not sure what sort of a prize it would have been," he observed, "given that you're clearly awake too."

He heard her sigh across the light years. "Sometimes, Commander Chakotay," she said, "you are entirely too clever for your own good. Or mine."

"Sorry, Captain," he said, without a single note of apology in his voice. "Was there something you needed help with?"

There was another pause. For a moment it felt as if she was hesitating, trying to come up with an answer to his question. Chakotay shifted against his pillows. It crossed his mind to wonder where Janeway herself was sitting. At her desk, presumably. She was probably still in uniform, despite the hour. Although she'd opted for audio only again, which would perhaps suggest… He frowned. "Captain?"

"What's that noise?" she asked. "I can hear something – is it in the background or is that feedback? Could there be an issue with _Voyager_ 's communications grid? Listen."

She fell silent again, and Chakotay listened, but could detect nothing. "I can't hear anything, Captain," he said, after a moment.

"Perhaps it's just on my end," she said. "It almost sounds like the rush of air – or water, maybe."

Realisation dawned as Chakotay turned towards his open balcony doors. "Ah," he said. "It's water, Captain. That's what you can hear. It's the ocean. Sorry – after three days here I've got so used to the sound I don't notice it."

"The ocean?" Janeway repeated. "Your quarters there overlook it?"

Chakotay swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up, heading for the open doors. "They do," he told her, as he walked barefoot onto the balcony.

Janeway was silent for a moment, and he could almost imagine her, leaning back in her chair, her head tipped back and her eyes shut, listening to the sound of a distant sea.

"I love that sound," she said, after a moment.

Chakotay smiled, looking down at the white-tipped waves crashing against the cliff below. "It's a little rougher down there than the last time we were on a boat together."

Her laugh stumbled out like pebbles tumbling on the shore. It had been a while since he'd heard it. "Ah, but the holodeck never could compare, could it?" she said, and then added, "Well, Commander – if I didn't envy you being planetside before, I do now. I didn't realise I was sending you to a luxury resort for this assignment."

"We're working hard, I can assure you, Captain. And making good progress, too."

"Oh, I don't doubt it, Chakotay. But still…" the Captain sighed and fell quiet. He leaned against the balcony, holding the PADD and letting her listen to the crash of the waves below. Chakotay saw her in his mind's eye, again with her eyes shut, because despite the distances that were between them now, and in more ways than one, he knew that this is how she would be at this moment. He looked down at the waves and wondered when the last time had been that he'd contemplated the idea of Kathryn Janeway as anything but bolt upright, wide awake and uniformed from ankle to neck. The night breeze brushed against the skin of his arms and chest, because he was wearing only sweat pants and just for a moment, for the first time in a long while, he contemplated the idea of her standing there beside him, instead of light years away.

"I should let you get to bed, Commander," Janeway said quietly, after a while. "It's extremely late."

"Or extremely early," he said. "Depending on how you want to look at it."

She laughed again. "Do you think you'll sleep?"

Chakotay considered and was surprised by the drowsiness that had settled over him. "I think so. You?"

"Yes," she said. "I think so, too."

"Goodnight, Captain."

"Goodnight. Chakotay?"

"Captain?"

"I'll talk to you tomorrow."

He smiled down at the waves, still rolling endlessly on their endless journey below him. "Yes, Captain."

It wasn't until after they had closed the line that Chakotay realised that she hadn't actually asked him anything of significance at all.

[TBC]


	3. Chapter 3

**Three**

* * *

Missing him crept up on her, like a habit one swears one does not have. She didn't realise it was happening until, a week into their brief, inconsequential nightly conversations, Chakotay skipped his turn to call. She lay curled on her side, looking at the chronometer, but it ticked off the minutes after three with no word from him. Turning on her back, Janeway studied the seams of the bulkheads above her and wondered where he was, what he was doing. She hoped he was asleep – the possibility that he could be prevented her from getting up and crossing to her terminal to call him herself. Instead, she cycled through the possibilities that could account for his absence from her night. As she did so, it occurred to her that she couldn't even pinpoint the last time they had been so physically distant from each other for this long. Yet at the same time it seemed as if the conversations they had been conducting via subspace – as trivial as they always turned out to be – were the first time they had really spoken in months. In years, even.

Kathryn Janeway sat up and drew her knees to her chest, looking across the small space between her regulation Starfleet bed and the window that gave her a vista to more time and distance than any person could ever reasonably be expected to confront. She had been out here for six years and instead of getting easier, the journey had only become more difficult. So many things had broken during _Voyager_ 's passage that she had come to accept the widening fissures in their relationship as just another inevitable victim of wear and tear: they were, after all, both under immense and constant strain, like every other component of the ship: moving parts that had been forced to operate far beyond their working lifespan. When she thought of it at all, she saw the new, bitter style of their alliance, the one that had emerged following the events surrounding their meeting with the Equinox – as merely a reflection of a natural evolution in their relationship. They were so different, after all, at heart. Weren't they?

Poles apart.

Light years, in fact.

Yet there had been something else, once. Hadn't there? She still remembered, vividly, the first time he had shown concern for her wellbeing, and how much it had taken her by surprise. It had happened early in the first year of _Voyager_ 's exile, when the true weight of the burden she had put upon herself and her make-do-and-mend crew had still been settling. Those first months had been an agony of light and darkness: for weeks she had lived a half-dream of hope that some quick miracle would take her little ship back home, an expectation that diminished with every passing shift. She felt as if she were holding _Voyager_ together with her fingernails, arms outstretched to breach a gap she had herself blown in her own ship's hull. She hadn't known Lieutenant Commander Cavit well – his posting to _Voyager_ was the first time they had served together – but he'd been Starfleet and as such would have at least been quantifiable entity as her first officer. Had he been there, she could have shared the burden equally: she would have expected to do so, without question or doubt. It had been mere political expediency that had made her assign the same position to Chakotay, nothing more. She had no doubt that he was capable, but all she really knew about him came from the records that detailed his history with the Maquis. He was a deserter, a rebel, a terrorist, a criminal she had been sent to quell and capture: the very model of unreliability. He had joined her because he'd had no other practical option and she supposed he would work to keep his place for the sake of his own crew, but beyond that she neither knew nor expected anything.

Commanding a ship is a lonely business, and no ship's command had ever been lonelier. As the weeks had lengthened, hope for a quick way home had faded and the shadow of despair had reached its fingers out to her, haunting her every moment, none more so than when she was supposed to be off duty. The idea that she could have downtime in such a situation seemed absurd – perverse even. Besides, she was constantly wired – a bundle of fizzing, spinning nerves, her mind occupied with so many day-to-day concerns. She was barely sleeping, often working until she passed out with her face on her desk instead of bothering to return to her quarters. She would wake an hour or two later, a crick in her neck and an ache in her shoulder, to continue working on whatever report on which she'd rested her cheek.

That was where he found her, one night in a string where she'd returned to her quarters only to shower and change her uniform. The warmth of his broad hand on her shoulder had roused her and she'd pushed herself up to find him leaning against her desk, a steaming mug in one hand. She'd sat up, one hand against her face, and looked around, faintly confused.

"Captain," he'd said, softly.

She'd rubbed her eyes, mind still blurred. "Commander? What is it? Is there a problem?"

Chakotay had smiled, a small gesture she hadn't yet seen but that over the years would become more important to her than she could possibly have understood at that moment. He'd held out the mug, which smelled distinctly lacking in coffee.

"If you keep this up, there will be."

She'd frowned at the mug. "I prefer coffee."

"I know you do," he said, "which is part of the problem. Drink it."

She straightened up, sleep giving way as she bristled. "Commander…"

"Listen to me," he said. "You will not do our crew any favours by working yourself into an early grave. You have to sleep, Captain. You have to eat. You have to see something other than these four walls and the bridge, or you will not survive to see this ship reach home. Do you understand?"

She'd pushed away from him, standing up with her fists clenched. "Commander, I don't know who you think-"

He'd stood too, then, hands loosely clasped behind his back, stance easy. He was head and shoulders over her but in that moment, in a flash of clarity so visceral it nearly made her stagger, she saw that he was trying to limit his size. Moreover, that he must have been doing it since the moment he'd stepped on board. She'd gaped at him, thinking _Why? For me? For my benefit?_ although even as the questions echoed away amid the tumult of her mind she'd already known the answer. She'd watched his face as this knowledge settled around her, shocked twice over: that he was the kind of man who would trouble himself to do such a thing and that she hadn't once noticed.

"Who do I think I am?" he'd asked, voice still quiet as he watched her carefully. "I know who I am, Captain. I'm your first officer. I think the more important question is, who do _you_ think I am? Because as far as I'm concerned, as first officer it is in my purview to assess the health and well being of my Captain, and I am telling you, if you keep this up – if you try to do this alone – you will not make it. Drink the tea. It will help you sleep, which you are now going to do for at least six hours even if I have get Tuvok to fit restraints to your bunk to make sure you stay in it."

She'd taken the tea, still reeling from her recent epiphany. "I can't sleep," she said. "There's no time. I have so much to do."

"What have you got to do?"

She'd waved a hand at the stack of PADDs on her desk. "Those are just for starters."

Chakotay had nodded. "Well, I'll take a first pass at them. That would help take a lot of the chaff off your desk. I'm sure there's plenty I can deal with myself. Obviously, I'll keep you updated with any decisions that you need to make. Perhaps we should implement a daily morning meeting, just between ourselves before senior staff?"

She was already shaking her head by this point, "No, that's not-"

"That's not what?" he'd asked, still studying her carefully. "Not a first officer's job?"

She'd blinked at him. He'd smiled again. She'd found herself a little mesmerised by the gesture – she was so tired – and averted her gaze to the tea, instead.

"Let me help you, Captain," he'd said, softly. "Trust me to do the job you've given me. You don't have to do this alone. You _can't_ do this alone."

She'd looked up from the mug, squaring her shoulders. She'd nodded. Then, after another moment, she'd tried to say something else. "Chakotay… I think, perhaps, that I… have not been fair to you."

His smile had widened. "Captain," he said, "you need to worry far more about being fair to yourself. I suggest that we discuss my role further at our morning briefing. For now… please allow me to escort you to your quarters."

He had. Chakotay had walked her to her door, a quiet presence just behind her, apparently comfortable with the silence that she could not find the words to break. She'd turned in the open doorway of her quarters and offered him a pale smile.

"Thank you," she told him, and then added, deliberately, " _Commander_."

Another smile. "You're welcome, Captain. Please promise me that you will try to sleep."

She'd felt herself smile back, perhaps the first genuine example she'd used since their arrival in the Delta Quadrant, and as she did an expression had passed across Chakotay's face. It was so fleeting that she'd barely even had a chance to see it, let alone interpret what it meant.

"I will," she'd said, softly. "Goodnight."

Janeway had kept that promise that night, though it wasn't the last time in the past six years that Chakotay had found her asleep in the ready room. It had been the first, however, and it had taught her more about the man she'd chosen as her first officer than any Starfleet manual ever could.

Rolling on to her side again, Janeway looked at the time. It was past four now. She shut her eyes, willing herself to drift off to sleep the way she had that night, when the burden she carried had suddenly seemed so much lighter.

She was just surfing the edge of sleep when a beeping pulled her back to consciousness. It wasn't the beep of a commline requesting an open channel, but of a message. Janeway got up. A light was blinking on hers screen. She sat at her desk, smiling at the name attached to the short recording. It was barely ten seconds long.

"Computer," she said, quietly. "Play message."

Chakotay's face appeared, his dark eyes smiling at her from the screen, and with a jolt she realised how long it was since she had seen his face. He was in uniform. _You look tired_ , she thought _. And that's usually your line, Commander._

"I hope this doesn't wake you," he said. "I just wanted to apologise for not being in contact this evening. The day ran late. We're making good progress, though. We'll update you properly in the next report." Chakotay paused and then smiled. "Goodnight, Kathryn. Sleep well."

She sat for a moment, looking at her reflection in the blank screen left by the absence of his face. It had been a long time since he'd called her Kathryn.

[TBC]


	4. Chapter 4

**Four**

* * *

Distance brought her back to him across the gulf that time had wrought. He thought about her in a way he had not for years. Not salaciously, but simply in the manner of one rediscovering something not even realised to be misplaced. During the day Chakotay worked, reviewing reports, poring over B'Elanna's suggestions of how to fuse Ellenial technology to aging Fleet systems, smiling and talking and smoothing the way for the crew he'd brought with him, and all the time she was there, at the back of his mind. How he'd explain _this_ to her, or _that_ , or formulating a description of a native bird he'd caught sight of, or the taste of one of the cakes they had been served at their evening meal and that he was fairly sure she'd be in raptures over.

This far out of sight, she had begun to come back into focus.

Six years they had been cocooned inside _Voyager_ , woven tightly in tandem by an invisible strand that separated even as it bound. There was rarely a movement either could make that was not known by the other, an enforced closeness that few relationships could bear, let alone one borne of such onerous circumstances. Before they had even had time to know each other they had been fastened together in a partnership on which the lives of a whole isolated community depended: a microcosmic world they were responsible for in its entirety. It was a responsibility he never would have sought and might not have accepted, had he been any less sure of her. Kathryn Janeway had confronted him, a small woman standing upright despite the niggling fear that must have lurked somewhere in her diminutive frame. She had spoken, not with bluster and condescension, not with a false aggrandizement of their relative powers and positions, but with a frank honesty that most others would have hidden out of a terror of confessing weakness before an enemy with whom they were seeking a truce. _I need you_ , she had said, _and you need me._ It was a tactic few men would have had the courage to employ and it gave him more respect for her than any blunt show of force could have at that moment. It had made her more of a Captain than most he had served with, and more than that it had made him willing to put his own crew under her command.

Chakotay had come close to forgetting, over the dull course of years, how intrigued he had been by her in those early days, and how instantly. He had known plenty of strong women – had acknowledged early, in fact, that women were warriors all, with the capacity for an everyday strength that few men would ever understand or be able to quantify – but Kathryn Janeway's strength was of a different magnitude altogether. What had fused that iron around her elegant backbone, what had given her the shielding she hefted around with her every single day? He'd found himself wondering about it, watching her as she moved around the bridge and the ready room and as she spoke. She'd never let it drop, that shield, even in those early days of tumult when the pain of separation from everything they knew and loved was still so raw and open it was in danger of suppurating. At least, she never let it drop in front of him. Perhaps, when she was alone in her quarters, she fell apart. Perhaps, behind the closed doors that framed the only private space she had, she crumbled. The sympathy he already felt for her position doubled anew as he considered this possibility, yet he didn't think it was so. He thought it unlikely Kathryn Janeway would ever let herself collapse, not even if she wanted to, not even if only she was there to see it happen. But he had no way of knowing for sure. It was this last unknown, the one just next door, through a bulkhead not quite thick enough to filter out the sound of her sonic shower, that he had absently pondered the most. What was behind that shield? What was she like, underneath it all?

Now, here on the Ellenial home world, separated from the place it had happened by too many light years to name, Chakotay remembered the night he had found out.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. _Why am I thinking of such things?_ He wondered. _Why have I gone back there, now?_ although in fact the answer was as clear to him as the stars constellating the night above his head. It was late and the day had been long. He was leaning on the balcony of his room, waiting to see if Kathryn was going to call. She was in his thoughts in a way she hadn't been for a long time, and distance had somehow removed the atrophied layers of their later relationship, memory taking him further back. He did not remember her as he had left her a week before. He was remembering how she had been in those early days, those early years, working herself to the bone yet still not inured to joy. Her smile: the way it had taken him so completely by surprise, made him wonder, anew, what was beneath that uniform (metaphorically, of course: only metaphorically).

" _Why won't you work?" he heard her scream, "Why won't you just WORK?"_

 _The sound of something heavy splintering as it connected with the wall, then sharp silence._

Chakotay leant on the balcony, harder, leaning down to press his hands over his face. The memory broke over him like one of the waves far below, rolling him in its wake. It had been a long time since he'd revived those early days and years. Back then, hope had been something real and alive, bitterness kept at bay by constant occupation and a soldier's mentality: _we're all in this together, make do and mend, we're stronger together, triumph over adversity_. More than that, though, his days had been spiced with something else, a silent electricity that flickered in his mind around the thought of her, the sight of her. It had given him a palpable a shock when he'd recognised it, when he'd realised that sympathy and fascination had comingled to become something else, something unexpected, unasked for and wholly inadvisable. Something that needed curbing, as if he hadn't known, the moment he'd acknowledged it, that it was already too late. He wondered if she knew: he wondered, in the long years since, whether she had pinpointed that night in the same way he did.

It had happened early in the second year of their journey. Chakotay had become used to hearing her shower – barely even noticed, anymore, the vibrating timbre of the sonic beams. Besides that, he had never heard any noise from her quarters at all. This evening, though, was different. He'd finished his shift weary and aching and retired straight to his rooms rather than seeking out Tom's latest holodeck diversion. Chakotay had made a simple supper and then sat down to read, but before long he had become aware of something: a disturbance from next door, a dull thump. He'd listened for a moment, but heard nothing more, and so continued in his recreation, until another sound had reached him, then another. He'd keyed his combadge.

"Computer, what is the location of Captain Janeway?"

" _Captain Janeway is in her quarters."_

"Is she alone?"

" _Affirmative."_

"Are her lifesigns within normal parameters?"

" _Affirmative."_

The sounds had stopped again. Chakotay hesitated. The computer would have noted if anything was wrong with the Captain physically. He was reluctant to intrude on the Captain's precious personal time. Whatever she was doing, she was safe. Beyond that was none of his business. He'd looked at the ship's time and, realising that it was late and he was really too tired to read anyway, had gone into his bathroom to wash before bed.

That was when he'd heard it.

" _Why won't you work? Why won't you just WORK?"_ Then came the sound of something crashing against the bulkhead between them, something heavy and brittle enough to splinter as it smashed to the deck.

He'd been out of his quarters and in front of her door in less than ten seconds. It wasn't the words that had driven him, or even the sound of whatever it was breaking against the wall. It was the sound of utter despair that had been in her banshee scream and the utter silence that had reigned after it.

"Captain?" he'd called, pressing the intercom on her door. There had been no answer so he overrode it, striding into the darkened room beyond.

His eyes had steered automatically towards whatever it was that had broken. The bulkhead was smeared with something dark that seemed to have exploded on impact, then streaked the wall as it fell the floor. The deck beneath the impact point was littered by what looked like a broken glass dish, the remaining contents spilling out over the regulation grey of Starfleet carpet.

"Captain?"

A figure had appeared in the bathroom doorway, backlit by the glow from the smaller room, and for a moment Chakotay didn't even recognise her. That was the first time he'd seen her with her hair completely loose. It flowed, long and unfettered over her shoulders, so completely contradictory to the tight bun she furled it into during shift hours that it changed her face completely. She was dressed in a pink satin nightgown that hung from narrow straps over her otherwise bare shoulders, dropping to skim the floor around her bare toes. He had managed to register that she carried a wet cloth in her hands.

They stared at each other for a moment, and even though her face was partly in shadow, he could see the tears that had streaked it before being dashed away.

"Commander," she'd said, as if he'd just walked into her ready room. "My apologies if I disturbed you."

"Captain - are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Please… go." She'd moved to the mess on the floor and knelt beside it.

Instead he had crossed the floor, dropping to a crouch beside her. "What happened?"

Janeway looked up at him. "I believe I just gave you an order."

"Then court martial me," he'd answered her, bluntly. "But do it after you tell me what happened. I heard you shout."

She'd looked away, spreading her hands out on the floor amid the ruins of whatever it was she'd thrown. This close, he could tell it was made, in large part at least, of chocolate.

"It was just a fight with the replicator," she told him. "Damn thing never does what I want it to."

He'd surveyed the mess. "Brownies?"

The word had shivered an emotion across her face. Then she'd nodded. "Yes. Caramel ones, actually. My mother's recipe." Janeway had sat back, dropping the cloth with a resigned sigh. "I could never make them properly at home. I don't know why I thought 75,000 light years and a machine would somehow make a difference."

Chakotay remembered holding out a hand to her. Janeway had looked at it for a moment, then had taken it and allowed him to help her to her feet. She let go of his fingers and they stood looking at each other. It was only then that he realised how much height her regulation boots gave her. In that moment her blue eyes had been brightly defiant, which he recognised was in the face of her own perceived frailty.

 _She is small and she is fierce and she is in pain and_ goddamn _it,_ he'd thought, _goddamn it_ , _but_ _if I touched her now she would feel as soft as_ _she is beautiful._

"Everyone has to meet their match sometime," was all he had said, as mildly as he was able. "For Kathryn Janeway, it looks like it might have come in the form of a replicator."

She laughed then, briefly, looking down at her hands. Her hair fell over her face and she pushed it back. "It's my mother's birthday today," she'd confessed, quietly. "I just… wanted to feel close to her. Ridiculous, I know. As if a tray of brownies could do that, even if they had been perfect."

"That's not ridiculous," he had told her, equally quietly. "I understand."

She'd looked up at him again, blue eyes clear as they searched his. "It's not really… about the replicator."

"I understand that, too."

Janeway had smiled then, a gesture sharp and painful beneath a furrowed brow. Still her eyes had studied his. Then she'd raised one hand and placed it flush against his chest, right over his heart. The warmth of her fingers reached through his t-shirt to deliver a shock straight onto his skin. And when she dropped her hand, they both knew he needed to leave.

Chakotay wondered if she'd ever realised just how close he'd come to pulling her closer instead of stepping away.

The shape of his memory was shattered by the sound of beeping that signalled an incoming message on the PADD. He left the balcony to retrieve it, calling for it to open a channel before he'd even picked it up.

Her face on the screen took him by surprise. Every other call they had made had been audio only. But here she was, Kathryn Janeway, older but still as beautiful as the one in his memory. There was a small, private smile on her face.

"Hello, Commander."

"Captain," he said. "It's good to see you."

And it was the truth.

[TBC]


	5. Chapter 5

**Five**

 **A/N:** Just wanted to say thank you if you're reading this, and thanks even more if you've left a review! They are hugely appreciated. This chapter is totally self-indulgent and an utter cliché, but I just wanted to write it, so there. Hope someone enjoys it. Happy Sunday!

* * *

She had kissed him, once.

He thinks she doesn't remember it, mainly because that's what she let him think: what she would prefer that he believe.

The third year of their journey. So much had happened and they were still so far from home. Kathryn had not given up – there were many things she had lost during the course of those years, but her determination to get _Voyager_ home was not one of them. Yet something else had seeped into her, too: a deep loneliness, a longing that no amount of extra-curricular mental or physical activity could sate. She had tried not to allow this want a shape, had denied to herself that it had a form at all, and if ever a face slid into mind to contradict her claims, she'd pushed it away, telling herself that _of course_ her loneliness would take her there: _of course_ he would be the one to surface in her thoughts. It was transference, that was all. He was the nearest thing she had to a peer, he was her friend and they had been through several circles of hell together. Besides which, a woman would have to be dead not to notice just how attractive Chakotay was. So naturally this nebulous longing occasionally coalesced in his form. _But it's not him,_ she told herself, resolutely. _It's just the situation. It's just that you're lonely, which is inevitable, and he's the closest thing you will ever have to full companionship on this cast-adrift ship._

It was a reasonable argument and one she clung to. If she'd been more sensible, she would have pushed him away sooner and with more force, especially given their isolated sojourn on the planetoid they nicknamed 'New Earth'. Yet at that point, in those early years, she couldn't bring herself to sever it, the invisible connection she could feel between them. Strike her down for a fool, but she hadn't wanted to snuff out the electricity that she sometimes thought she saw in his eyes when their gazes met. It was the only thing that made her heart skip for a reason other than anxiety, and she couldn't – would not - let it go completely. It was selfish, she had known it even at the time, and now, through the prism of hindsight, Janeway cursed herself for not being stricter. She'd excused that one weakness with the reasoning that he wasn't as restricted in his choices as she was – Kathryn knew for a fact that he'd only have to profess himself open to offers to have plenty of the crew throwing themselves at him. Chakotay could likely have whatever women on the ship he wanted, and perhaps he was indeed having them, behind closed doors. She wasn't under any illusion that she had any sort of hold over him, certainly not one that had been exerted by a few smouldering looks and a chaste touch or two.

It was only later that she had seen that perhaps, that assumption had been her biggest mistake of all.

But back then, in the third year of their journey, the frisson between them frequently provided more fun than it did pain. That night had been a case in point. _Voyager_ had paused to trade at a peaceful colony of the Hashete, and Neelix was intent on filling the ship's cargo bays with as much produce as they could take. _Voyager_ 's visit had happened to coincide with some sort of planet-wide thanksgiving celebration to which the whole ship had been invited. The Captain and her First Officer had agreed that it was the perfect opportunity for the crew to enjoy themselves a little – those who were fortunate enough not to be needed for the skeleton crew who stayed aboard, of course.

Janeway herself had been a little reticent about attending, if truth be told, not that there was any question of her being able to shirk her responsibilities and stay in her quarters for the duration. The loneliness had been at a particularly high ebb that week, though she'd done her level best to keep it to herself. She hadn't succeeded, of course, or at least not entirely, something she'd only realised when Chakotay had encouraged her to don civvies for the event instead of her uniform.

"I know you're not keen," he'd said, as they'd sat on the sofa in the ready room, looking out of the window at the pearl of a planet they orbited. "But I think this will do you good, Captain. You need a good shin-dig as much as the rest of us."

She'd eyed him over the rim of her mug. "'Shin-dig'?"

Chakotay's smile had been warm and self-deprecating. "It's what Tom Paris is calling it. I warned him not to start a square dance without our hosts' express permission."

She couldn't help but smile at that. "There's quite a buzz about it, isn't there? This party of the Hashetes."

"There is. That… doesn't extend to you, though, does it? You don't really want to go, I can tell."

Kathryn had smiled again. "I can't hide anything from you, can I? Don't worry, I'll make sure I pull the wool over our host's eyes. I wouldn't want to dash Neelix's hopes of filling the hold."

He'd smiled again, but there was concern in his eyes. "Is there anything I can do?"

"I'm fine, Chakotay. Really, don't worry about me. It's just… I find that it's more and more of an effort to socialise, these days. I'm tired, I suppose."

The concern she saw in him multiplied. "It's not surprising. You've been on duty for three years straight."

She'd reached for her mug to hide behind, shaking her head. "So have you. So have the rest of the crew. I've got nothing special to complain about."

"Kathryn," he'd said, softly, reaching out to touch her elbow. "Yes, we're all tired, but you're the Captain. And-"

"And it's my fault," she interrupted him. "I'm the one that put us here."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"I know it wasn't. I'm just stating a truth, Chakotay, one that shows precisely why I have no right to complain."

"I was going to say, 'And the Captain bears so much more than he rest of the crew,'" he'd said, his voice still soft. "If we're tired, then I know you are exhausted. That worries me, and I wish I could do more to help you - but it worries me more when you start to withdraw. You need companionship as much as the rest of us. You need _fun_. The times you begin to draw away from that are exactly the times you should make the effort, as hard as it might be. You shouldn't be alone when you feel that way."

She'd looked at him then, and a spark had shivered through her heart at the sight of his dark eyes, fastened so completely on her. She'd smiled, aware that the expression was a sad one. "You don't need to worry about me."

At that moment, the look his eyes could have kept her warm through a decade of Indiana winters. "I will always worry about you."

She still hadn't been enthusiastic about going, but as always, he somehow managed to make her feel as if whatever obstacle was ahead was surmountable. Janeway had chosen a loose, pale green silk shirt and a pair of linen pants for the occasion, and beamed down at his side with what was almost a genuine smile on her face.

It was only halfway through the meal that Kathryn had realised that the drink the Hashete had been liberally supplying all evening was of a type far more intoxicating to humans than wine. In truth, she'd been aware that the first glass had gone straight to her head, but she'd been in need of something to help her get into the party spirit, and the drink had done the trick. She was on her way to actually enjoying herself. Their hosts were an affable, friendly species, she and the crew were in a safe place, and it was good to look around the tables in the Hashetes' great hall and see all her people having fun. Chakotay was on her right, their host's Minister for Alien Affairs on her left.

It was only when she dropped one of her pieces of cutlery on the floor and bent to retrieve it that she realised just how drunk she was. She straightened up and the room was spinning. She'd gripped the edge of the table, trying to focus, but the effect, once it had started, seemed only to get worse.

"Captain?" Chakotay's voice had reached her through the fug. "Are you all right?"

She'd kept her eyes shut but shaken her head, trying to clear it, which turned out to be a mistake.

"Chakotay-"

"Captain," Chakotay said again, his clear voice anxious now. He put one hand on her upper arm. "Are you unwell?"

She looked down at his hand, then up at him. His face swam in front of her. She tried to clear her throat. "I'm all right. But I… need to leave."

He'd glanced over her head to the Hashete's minister for inter-species affairs, who was looking at them both anxiously.

"Captain Janeway?" the alien asked. "Has something at our table disagreed with you?"

Kathryn had turned to him with difficulty. She had to concentrate not to slur her next sentence. She pointed at the glass beside her plate. "I think… it would perhaps be a good idea not to serve our people any more of this drink, Minister. It's… quite a bit… stronger than we are used to."

The minister immediately turned to one of the servers, issuing a quick order. Every jug of the drink was removed almost instantaneously, replaced by a different – hopefully far less potent – substance. Then he turned back to her.

"What can I do?" he asked.

"I don't wish to disturb your celebrations," she managed, "or my crew's enjoyment of the evening. But I think… it may be as well if I return to _Voyager_. If I can do so without offending anyone."

"Of course, Captain. I'm so sorry. If we had known…"

"Please," she had managed, alarmed at the slur she could hear edging into her voice. She couldn't appear as a falling-down drunk in front of her crew. She just couldn't. "There is no need for apologies. I should have known better. I was… enjoying myself too much."

She stood, desperate not to sway in front of the huge table at which they had been sat. Chakotay stood, too, one hand on her lower back.

"I'll come with you, Captain."

"No – Chakotay," it was becoming more and more difficult to form words, but she fought to anyway, "I need to you check on the rest of the crew. Make sure they're all safe. Make sure none have been as effected as I have, and if they have-"

"Captain," Chakotay had said, his voice low. "Let me see you back to the ship first."

She'd been about to argue, but then the ground had tilted and she'd held herself up only by slipping one arm through his and leaning on it, heavily.

To his credit, the Hashete minister had helped facilitate her escape.

"Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay," he'd said, perhaps a little louder than was necessary, "perhaps a mid-prandial stroll would be in order? Allow me to show you the beautiful courtyard gardens here."

"Thank you," she'd whispered, as the two men walked her out of the hall.

"No need for thanks, Captain," the minister told her. "I am mortified that we have caused such an esteemed guest so much difficulty."

She'd clung to Chakotay's arm, desperate to keep herself upright just long enough to make it back to the ship. Her grip was so hard that he'd have bruises in the morning. "Please, minister," she'd said, in little more than a whisper. "Would you check on the rest of _Voyager_ 's personnel?"

The minister had bowed and retreated. Chakotay immediately went to tap his combadge, but she grabbed his hand to stop him.

"Not to sickbay," she'd said, hoarsely. "To my quarters."

"No, Captain. You need the Doctor to check on you."

"I've been drunk before in my life, Chakotay," she said, beginning to fear that her legs were about to give way. "I don't need a lecture about the evils of alcohol from the EMH, I just need some water and to lie down."

He'd only hesitated for a split second more. Then he'd called for a site to site. She sagged against him as _Voyager_ 's transporter gripped them, her legs no longer obeying her commands.

She rematerialised with his arms wrapped around her. Kathryn held on to him, her head spinning as he'd helped her to her couch. He'd set her down, gently, then disappeared as she'd sunk back into the cushions. A moment later she heard him give her replicator an order followed by the silvery sound of it answering his command. Then he was back, kneeling on the floor beside her, one hand on her arm.

"Here's water," he'd said. "Can you sit up to drink it?"

She'd levered herself up with his help and sipped gratefully at the water. At some point she realised he was stroking her hair back from her face.

"How are you feeling now?"

"I'll be all right."

"Are you sure? I'd still be happier if the Doctor checked you over. If there's something more in this drink, something that disagrees badly with human physiology…"

"No," she'd whispered. "Please. Please don't."

He'd fallen silent. She'd shut her eyes and lost herself in the feeling of his fingers still stroking her hair. His other hand had rescued the water glass and put it down. Then something had occurred to her and she'd opened her eyes again.

"Why aren't you in the same state as me?"

"I didn't drink anything but water."

She'd leaned into his touch, almost without realising. She remembered the last time a man had touched her with such care. It had been him then, too, probing the sore muscles of her shoulders. She'd leaned into him then, too, because… because.

"Why not?"

"I thought that at some point during the evening you would decide that you needed to curb your enjoyment, and I didn't want you to have to. I wanted you to be able to do exactly what you wanted to, without worrying about keeping an eye on the rest of the crew. I thought if I didn't drink anything at all, I'd be able to tell you to leave it all with me."

She studied his eyes, his tattoo, drowning in something other than wine, a feeling that washed over her sore heart and made it beat a different rhythm.

"Why," she'd whispered, "are you so good to me?"

His fingers had paused then, something flickering through his eyes. And Kathryn had leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

For a second, the universe stopped. Chakotay's fingers trembled in her hair, then stroked down her cheek to her jaw. She'd parted her lips, wanting to map the warm, soft fullness of his, pulling his lower one between them: and here, this, was so absolutely the answer to what she had needed-

He'd pulled away, putting both hands on her shoulders and pushing her back, holding her there.

"No," he'd said, his eyes shut. "I can't."

It was only three words, but they cut deep. She sat back and he let her go, standing up and turning away, putting his hands on his hips and dropping his head. Her mortification was complete and devastating.

"Commander," she slurred, hating that she couldn't even control her speech, hating herself for far more. "Commander, please forgive me. I…"

"Kathryn," he'd said, with soft deliberation, "there is nothing to forgive. Please believe that. I just… I need to check on the crew. You need to sleep. Everything… will seem different in the morning."

He didn't turn back to look at her and as he walked away she felt the wave that had enveloped her heart wash up into her throat and eyes and then recede just as quickly, leaving only the dry shore of aching loneliness in its wake. She'd dropped her head in her hands and bent forward, her body wracked deep, curled in against herself, against the universe at large and her useless part in it.

Kathryn had thought he'd gone. So when she heard his footsteps again, and his voice coming back towards her, she'd thought it was just the awful delirium of her inebriation. But then he was kneeling beside her, his strong hands pulling hers away from her face and then running warmly down her sides and back up again, over her shoulders to cup her face and tangle in her hair.

"Kathryn," he'd whispered, "Kathryn…" and then he'd kissed her, full on the mouth, so deeply and with such abiding passion that she felt a new kind of wave gathering at the edges of her shore. His lips were soft but determined to tell her something with their touch, the kind of conversation all the more fervent for its silence. His arms had shifted, pulling her against him until that warmth she had seen in his eyes surrounded her completely. Her head spun anew: no, not just her head, the whole of her, her whole being. This time, when he pulled away, it was a gentle parting, just far enough that he could rest his forehead against hers, running one hand up from where it was spread against her back to cup her face again, his other arm still holding her tightly to his body.

"'I can't'," he had whispered then, "is not the same as 'I don't want to'."

He'd left soon after. She'd stayed on the couch, staring up at the planet they orbited until sleep had claimed her completely.

And the next morning, she had pretended she had no recollection of the night before at all. He hadn't called her on it, hadn't ever alluded to what had happened between them: what she had done, what he had done to follow it. It was as if it had never happened, and so she could tell herself that it did not matter. Over the intervening years she had convinced herself that it had been yet another example of extraordinary kindness on his part: just one more selfless way her first officer had kept her going through just one more difficult night.

Yet still, those words had echoed in her mind, through all these years. Even now, as she sat listening to him explain the great feast of the Ellenial that he and the team would be present for.

"Apparently this celebration only happens once every 50 years," he told her, his face clearly animated even through the flattening nature of her screen. She hadn't seen a light like this in Chakotay's eyes for a while. "We're extremely lucky that our visit coincides with it. I have to admit, I'm looking forward to researching its cultural significance. You should see this place at the moment – the Ellenial are always cheerful people, but at the moment their excitement would be enough to re-power a dead warp core."

Kathryn smiled and rested her chin on her palm. "I almost wish I could see it myself."

"Well, why can't you?" he asked. "Get on a shuttle, Captain. Come join us. You've got time to make it before the feast. Besides, B'Elanna would welcome the help with the Ellennial systems. Tuvok can keep the ship on course and we'd still be able to rendezvous with _Voyager_ at the other end of the vortex, as planned."

"I can't," she said, almost laughing. "But I will look forward to hearing your report of the celebration. It does sound fascinating."

"I'll be sure to take good notes."

"Do," she smiled. "And… just be sure to go easy on any local moonshine, won't you? That stuff can be lethal."

Something flickered across his face for a moment, before he glanced away with a warm smile. "I'll be sure to remember that."

There was something in his expression that made her heart shiver in her chest, just for a split second. It was a sensation she'd almost forgotten the truth of, and it let the words that were in her head out of her mouth before she had the good sense to rein them in.

"Chakotay," she said, softly. "'I can't…' is not the same as 'I don't want to'."

His eyes flashed back to hers. In them she saw deep astonishment, but alongside that was something else. It reached out to her, a flash of electricity so palpable that she could feel it even across the distance between them, so palpable that she had to take a breath around the skipped beat of her heart.

[TBC]


	6. Chapter 6

**Six**

 **A/N:** Sorry for the prolonged delay and for how short this is. I struggled with this one, for some reason, and RL is a bit demanding at the moment. Hope there's something worth reading here.

* * *

Chakotay watched her through the screen. In truth, he was less surprised that she remembered that night than he was by the fact that she was choosing to bring it up now: or indeed, ever. He'd always suspected that her memory wasn't quite as blank on the events of that evening as she'd seemed to want him to believe. None of the other crew who had partaken of the Hashete beverage in equal quantities had experienced that particular side effect, for example, though plenty of them had been as inebriated. It seemed unlikely that only her memory would be impaired. Not that he had been inclined to push her on it. What good would have come of that? Besides, he had been keen to put the incident out of his own mind, too, and had had no difficulty understanding why she had found the obfuscation necessary.

Kathryn wasn't looking at him, was instead studiously regarding something on her desk, a sight line that drew her attention away from him with an air of concentration that furrowed a line between her eyebrows. It gave him a vague sense of déjà vu, her sitting opposite him having initiated what could be expected to be an awkward conversation. She'd been out of uniform then, too, although in less relaxed attire than she wore now. His eyes drifted across the coffee-coloured wrap crossed over her chest. As modest as it was, it left her neck bare. The material shone slightly in the muted light of her dimmed quarters, the refractions casting fluid shadows against her skin. He wondered how it was that she could still be so beautiful, despite the long, hard years of their exile. It was distance that allowed him to think this: something he had not contemplated for a long time. It was strange, too, he thought, that at so great a remove she felt more approachable than she had for months, possibly years. He watched a slice of her loose hair – far shorter now than it had been at the start of their journey – fall slowly across her cheek. Chakotay wondered if the sensation of its touch on her skin reminded her of the same thing that it did him. He was too far away, this time, to brush it back the way he had that evening.

He was surprised to realise that he wished he wasn't.

Pushing her away that night had not been difficult. The touch of her lips against his had taken him by surprise – a permutation he hadn't seen coming until it was too late and that he would have avoided, for both their sakes, if he'd been less distracted by her subdued demeanour. Chakotay was so used to her being in control that seeing her otherwise was discomforting. Crouching there, in front of her, he'd been unexpectedly reminded of the woman that existed beneath the uniform and the burden of her constant, prolonged command. He'd seen that vulnerability very few times, and to that point when he had it was always in the aftermath of her recovering herself: a glimpse as the armour sealed shut again. But just then, she was in the midst of it, and seeing her that way had moved him enough that he'd let his own guard slip. He hadn't realised he was reaching out to touch her until his fingers were already in her hair. He hadn't seen the danger, either, until she'd asked that whispered question.

" _Why are you so good to me?"_

There had been no chance to hide his unwitting answer. He'd been told before that he was a terrible liar, precisely because the truth was so often there in his eyes before he'd even said a word. He knew what she had to have seen there, and it was barely a second later that she had leaned forward to seal her lips against his.

Kathryn Janeway was drunk, she had repeatedly made it clear that the thread between them could never be made shorter than it currently was, and the respect he had for her was absolute. For these reasons it was not difficult to push her back, despite how warm her lips had been, how perfectly they fit against his and despite the tiny, tantalising brush of her tongue against his bottom lip as she'd parted hers, clearly wanting something more. There was no other response he could have made at that moment.

Her face, though, as he'd done it, had made his heart ache. It was a look of utter disgust and humiliation directed squarely at her own self, and he hated to see it from her, who continually gave so much and yet always judged herself so harshly. Chakotay had turned away, steeling himself to leave her here with her horror, wishing he had never had the idea of escorting her back to the ship: that he'd simply called for her to be transported directly to sickbay. He'd tried to reassure her after her stuttered apology, made for the door, telling himself not to turn around…

…but he hadn't made it. He'd cast a glance back over his shoulder and what he'd seen had stopped him dead. She was the picture of despair, and it was a sight that rang a plangent note in his heart, one that resonated through every nerve he had. He didn't want to leave her like that. He _couldn't_ leave her like that. He wanted to hold her: in truth, had wanted to hold her for a long time. At that moment, the thing that he had told himself was exactly the wrong thing to do became the only thing he could imagine would make any difference. He couldn't bear the idea that she thought she was not desired, because for the life of him, he could not remember ever wanting anyone more, or so completely, or for so long.

He'd put so much into the stolen kiss that followed that he'd felt her tremble against him, warm and soft and supple in exactly the way he had always known she would be, beneath it all. Breaking away from her then had been against everything his heart and body were telling him, but he'd done it. The guilt had set before he'd even made it out of her quarters. For sure he had over-stepped the mark. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to regret it.

The feel of her lips on his had stayed with him for a long time. Chakotay had wondered if the same were the case for Kathryn, a suspicion he'd tried not to dwell on but that reoccurred to him every time her gaze slid in the direction of his mouth as they spoke, something that seemed to happen with increasing frequency after the events of that evening.

He'd waited for her to bring it up. To sit him down at a table, to look him in the eye and tell him that they needed to talk about what had happened. She never had, not for that night, which both surprised him and didn't in equal measure. He'd waited until he'd given up waiting, until the latent anticipation and the frisson that existed between them became something else: something faded, something jaded. Chakotay recognised, with sadness, that this evolution had always been inevitable in the situation that they were in: the situation that she, in truth, had chosen for them. If Kathryn had come to him the day after those kisses, if she had come to him at any number of points when they had almost crossed the line she had drawn between them, if she had ever said 'Chakotay, I want to try this, I want to at least _try_ '… But she hadn't, and he understood why while also recognising that this had been their downfall. His regard for her had and would always remain undiminished, but life could not exist in a vacuum. They had tried that experiment and reinforced the scientific reality. Four years had passed, four years of hardship and difficulty, of incidents that sucked a little more of the oxygen out of the sealed, invisible sphere in which they kept what had unexpectedly budded between them. Four years of something deliberately stunted before it had had a chance to bloom, until they rarely even opened the door to it anymore, aware that each time they did, more escaped than was replenished, because straying near that invisible line inevitably became about what they could not do, instead of what they could.

Chakotay did not blame her for the decision she had made. He had loved her for it, in fact, because how could he not? This was who Kathryn Janeway was, a monolith to a promise made at the start of an unbearable journey that she was nonetheless determined to bear. It was symbolic of her spirit, that determination, that single-mindedness, so how could he reject that?

But still. Life could not exist in a vacuum. And outside of one, change is inevitable, unstoppable, irrevocable.

Yet here he was, watching her through a viewscreen, feeling almost close enough to touch despite being lightyears away, and he remembered how her skin had felt under his fingers, how her mouth had opened under his, remembered how he had imagined pressing her back against those cushions instead of letting her go. Wanting, now, to cross that line, to wrench open that door, even if it resulted in that final breath of oxygen being lost at last.

"Kathryn," he said, quietly, to her turned-away face. "Kathryn."

He saw her draw in a breath, her chest swelling as it filled her lungs. She looked at him, her eyes serious and glittering, mourning something that neither of them had ever properly named. Then her gaze strayed from his, and he knew she was tracing the lines of his tattoo. Her jaw was a line carved in pale marble, and he knew what it felt like to run his fingers over its planes.

"You're too far away," he murmured, not certain he'd even said it loud enough for her to hear.

She moved her gaze back to his. "It's too late," she said, just as quietly. "I should let you go."

"It's not too late," he told her, "and I don't want you to let me go."

"Chakotay-"

"Come here, Kathryn. Just get on a shuttle, and come here."

She shook her head - a tiny movement - blue eyes huge, luminous with something else now, something he'd provoked in her before at least once that he knew of. "I can't."

He nodded, still watching her. "Sometimes," he said, softly, "'I can't' does mean 'I don't want to.'"

She exhaled, a soft, shaky breath he couldn't see snaking out into the air of her quarters. "I have to go," she said. "Goodnight, Commander."

He smiled, watching her close that invisible door. "Goodnight, Captain."

[TBC]


	7. Chapter 7

**Seven**

There was no way that Kathryn could remain idle after such a conversation. She went to bed, but instead of sleep she lay staring out at the stars, replaying a thousand moments in her head, a tidal wave of memory she had unknowingly stored for years somewhere in her subconscious and that now burst out, rushing at her one after the other until she could barely draw breath between them. Each carried with it an aspect of a simple message that tessellated into one complete whole: a recollection of the man that she had somehow forgotten amid the general sucking mire of their daily lives. It was too much, and so Kathryn Janeway did what she always did when all else failed her. She pulled on her uniform, and she went to work. Never mind that it was touching 0400 hours. On _Voyager_ there was always something that needed the Captain's attention, whatever the time: it was the ship's worst quality, and also her saving grace.

Janeway passed across the bridge as unobtrusively as she could. Not for the first time, Kathryn wished there was a more direct way for her to access the ready room. On a night like this she would have preferred her passage through the ship to be invisible, but instead she was forced to smile and nod at various members of crew, surprised to see their Captain in duty mode instead of where she should have been – settled in her quarters fast asleep, reenergizing for the day ahead.

Kathryn was on her way to the replicator before the ready room doors had even hushed shut behind her, hesitating only slightly as she considered her options. She wanted coffee, but was that just foolishness at this time of the morning? On the other hand, was she really expecting to get any more rest before her own shift began in earnest? Unlikely.

"Coffee," she ordered. "Hot. Black."

She drank the first as she stood there and immediately ordered another before the caffeine had even hit her bloodstream. Then she crossed to her desk and slid behind it, pulling the pile of reports that had accumulated in the few hours of her absence towards her and beginning to read.

It was less than ten minutes later that the door chime sounded. Janeway looked up with a frown.

"Come."

Her acting first officer entered, one eyebrow raised in that way he had, an expression she had always found peculiarly emotive for a man who so prided himself on his ability to control his feelings.

"Tuvok," she acknowledged, attention returning to the PADD before her. "You're up early."

"As are you, Captain," he observed, coming to a standstill in front of her desk.

Janeway sighed and looked up at him again. "Not a coincidence, I take it?"

The eyebrow rose a little higher. "Commander Chakotay has a standard order in place. The first officer is to be notified when the Captain enters the ready room outside of her duty hours. Since I am currently fulfilling this role-"

"-you were the one to get the call," Janeway finished, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. _Chakotay,_ she thought. _How long has that order been standing? It's been a while since you appeared at my side with a drink of hot tea in your hand…_

The thought clenched around her heart. Then his face as she had seen it so recently floated to her, his soft voice: _Come here, Kathryn. Just get on a shuttle, and come-_

She cleared her throat, reaching out to square the PADD on her desk.

"Well, thank you for your concern, Tuvok, but as you can see, I'm fine. Just catching up on these reports ahead of the day. Please – go back to your quarters. I'm sorry that you were disturbed."

Tuvok did not seem inclined to move, though his eyebrow had lowered. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his attention studiously trained just beyond her left shoulder, though Kathryn was wise to that game.

"Was there something else?"

Tuvok's gaze readjusted to meet hers. Somehow, despite the length of time they had known each other and her knowledge of his age and experience, Kathryn occasionally found herself surprised by the way he could read her so well, and without apparent effort. It was incongruous to find such quiet wisdom in so young a face. Still. She wasn't going to be blindsided by another awkward conversation. Not at 4am, thank you very much. This time it was she who raised the eyebrow, as well as her chin.

"Though I am currently acting as first officer, Captain, I am still overseeing the ship's security."

"I never doubted that you would, Tuvok."

"This, of course, includes the monitoring of communications, particularly any conducted with external sites."

Kathryn's eyes narrowed. "And?"

"It has come to my attention that there have been multiple instances of off-board communications recently."

She continued to look steadily up at him. "Have you been _spying_ on me, Tuvok?"

"No, Captain. Once I ascertained the source and destination of these communications, I realised there was no cause for alarm."

"Well, thank goodness for that," she said, dryly.

"The source, destination and time of each communication is, of course, logged automatically, however."

Kathryn sighed, impatient. "What are you getting at, Tuvok?"

"When I received the notice that you were in your ready room, I checked the log. I thought perhaps that there would be a gap indicating that a communication had not taken place this evening. My reasoning was that such an absence could perhaps account for your presence at your desk at this hour."

She stared at the report in front of her again, wondering whether to simply dismiss Tuvok and get on with the blessed job in hand.

"There wasn't an absence," she said, instead.

"Indeed."

Kathryn pushed herself out of her chair, stalked to the replicator and requested more coffee. "Do you want tea?" she asked Tuvok, once the computer had complied.

"Thank you, Captain, but I do not intend to interrupt you long."

She turned away from the replicator but did not face him, heading instead for the windows. "What I am wondering, Tuvok, is your purpose in interrupting me at all. Somehow I don't think we've quite reached the crux of that yet. Have we, old friend?"

There was a pause. Kathryn sipped her coffee and waited him out. _There is such space between stars,_ she thought, eyes tracing the paths between the pinpricks of light. _So much time, so much distance. What a miracle we have learned to navigate it at all._

"You should know, Captain, that in recent months it has come to my attention that the relationship between the command team of this ship has been under considerable strain."

Kathryn looked down at the surface of her drink. "I suppose that monitoring is part of your duties as security chief too, is it?"

"Frankly, Captain – yes. It is."

She nodded, but still didn't look at him. "Your assessment is correct, of course."

"I was therefore… encouraged… to note that communication between you and Commander Chakotay appeared to be improving," Tuvok went on. "Albeit at a substantial remove."

Janeway did turn to face him then, one hand on her hip. "And now you're concerned that the command team has suffered some form of setback, is that it? Well, let me set your mind at rest, Tuvok. Commander Chakotay and I will operate as efficiently as a team as we always have. You won't have any cause for complaint or concern."

Tuvok regarded her quietly for a moment, as if collating his next words with even more care than usual.

"I have never once had cause for complaint in that regard," he said. "The command unit of this ship has been exemplary from the first, showing itself to be so even through the inevitable frictions that are to be expected during a journey of this nature and duration. What concern I have is for you, Captain. As my friend."

She stared at him for a moment. Then: "I'm not sure Commander Chakotay would believe that you had always considered him to be exemplary," she observed. "I'm not sure I believe it either, given certain incidents in our early years aboard this ship."

Tuvok inclined his head, acknowledging the point. "Then let me express it this way, Captain. It did not take long for my prejudices on a theoretical level to be overridden by the logic provided by practical experience of the man himself. It also did not take long for me to realise that had I been appointed your first officer, I could not have provided what Commander Chakotay so steadfastly offered you for so long."

Involuntarily, she felt her cheeks colour and gritted her teeth. "I don't know what you are implying, Tuvok, but let me assure you-"

"I do not mean to imply anything, Captain. I am merely stating a truth: in the situation we have aboard _Voyager_ , a Vulcan first officer – I, myself - could not have provided you with the relationship that has developed between yourself and Commander Chakotay."

She looked away again, frowning. "We never had any form of relationship of the sort that you suggest. I made sure of that."

"With respect, Captain, that your relationship with Commander Chakotay has remained platonic for such a length of time is testament to your strength of character – but also a grave mistake."

Janeway made a sound in her throat, astonished and horrified in equal measure. "Tuvok, this conversation has gone far, far beyond the bounds of propriety. It is now also beginning to strain the edges of friendship."

"I hope you will forgive me, Captain," Tuvok said, "but there is no one else to tell you this. Commander Chakotay cannot himself and it is hard to see who else could be so blunt. As your friend, it therefore falls to me, however awkward it may be for both of us. _Voyager_ is not on a standard mission. You are not in a standard command structure. Your devotion to duty is admirable, but damaging. I believe you may even be realising that yourself."

Kathryn shook her head. "I can't believe this is coming from you, of all people, Tuvok. If you were in my position-"

"If I were in your position, Captain, I would be a Vulcan in your position. You are _human_. Commander Chakotay is _human_. The majority of this crew is _human_."

"And that makes what difference to this situation? Does it make me less of a Captain? Does it make me less bound to put the lives of my crew first?"

"Human life is short," Tuvok said, simply. "It is short and fragile, Captain, and there is not one Admiral of the Fleet who would attribute blame for an attempt to live yours while you can. More importantly, you are a Captain who leads by example. You never ask your crew to do what you are unwilling to do yourself. That is admirable in the extreme, but it is a path that leads in both directions. The crew can see that their Captain is not living a full life, which is perhaps seen as a silent suggestion for them in turn."

Kathryn spun to face him. "I've never made any sign that I would be averse to crew pairing off. I've always acknowledged that it is inevitable. And look at Tom and B'Elanna. They have _always_ had my full support."

"Quite so, Captain. And yet, there are still few couples aboard this ship, and still fewer marriages."

Kathryn gave a strangled laugh and clunked her empty mug down on the table. "Oh please, Tuvok, do add another ladle to the cauldron of my constantly bubbling guilt. It's not quite overflowing yet, after all. I can still fit in a few more boiling regrets."

There was a brief and bitter silence, in which Janeway turned her back on him, resting both hands on her hips.

"This is a moot point, anyway," she muttered. "Whatever there might have been between us once was crushed once and for all with the _Equinox_ incident."

"Then what," Tuvok asked, "have the two of you found to talk about every night since he has been off-ship?"

Kathryn rubbed a hand over her face. "I don't know. It's almost as if… we've gone back, somehow. To the early days, when…" she trailed off and shook her head.

Tuvok let the silence settle for a moment. "With your permission, Captain, I would like to relate the recollection of an incident from my childhood."

Kathryn barked a short, wry laugh. "Why not?" she said. "It's not as if a story can have any damaging side effects can it?"

"When I was very young," Tuvok began, "my siblings and I would visit my grandparents. I know that my grandmother considered her greatest achievement, besides her progeny and their own children, to be her garden. She was renowned in her neighbourhood for the blooms she grew there."

Janeway crossed her arms with a frown. "I would have thought the Vulcan climate too harsh for many decorative plants."

"Precisely," Tuvok agreed. "Which of course made her successes all the more significant. There was one plant in particular that she had struggled for years to cultivate, a climbing bush whose flowers were reputed to be short-lived, beginning to fade as soon as they opened. I remember seeing her tending it on visits spanning years. It grew and spread, but it never flowered. Still my grandmother persevered. It took a decade of persistent cultivation to produce just a handful of buds. As an adult, now, it is possible for me to imagine the satisfaction that the small cluster must have provided to my grandmother."

"Even as a Vulcan, she must have experienced pride when she saw those flowers blooming," Kathryn said, wondering what on earth Tuvok's memory had to do with her situation.

Tuvok inclined his head. "I am sure she would have done, had she had the opportunity to see those flowers bloom," he said. "But she did not. Before they matured enough to open, a storm bore down upon the region in which my grandparents lived, said by our meteorologists to have been the worst in a generation. It tore through their garden, as destructive as fire. It ripped my grandmother's work to shreds. When the storm passed and she was able to examine the damage, she found all three of the plant's major trunks severed, the branches already wilting – and with it, the buds."

"Oh god," Kathryn said. "That's terrible. Your poor grandmother! All that work, all that care – to come so close, and then – gone, just like that…"

"It is the only time I have ever seen my grandmother express emotion," Tuvok said. "I believe, at that moment, she was the closest she ever came to collapse."

There was a pause. Kathryn frowned. "Tuvok," she said. "I don't really understand what the purpose of that story was."

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "The purpose of it, Captain, is to enable me to relate to you what happened the following year."

"Why? What happened?"

"At first," Tuvok went on, "my grandmother planned to discard the last of the plant, reasoning that it was dead and therefore its roots were taking up space needlessly. I surmise that she also did not want to be reminded, by its severed stumps, of where it had once been. But there was so much work to do to mend the garden, and perhaps, after all, she found it difficult to discard it completely, given the pride she had once had in it. She left the clearing of its remnants until last. Then, when she finally came to uproot it, she discovered a shoot. It was small: barely even there, bright green and sprouting straight from the earth. At first she was unsure whether the shoot belonged to the plant. She wondered whether it was simply a weed, making use of the space. Still, she determined to wait a while, to see. She gave it another chance.

"The plant grew and grew, more shoots joining the first, climbing so fast that they swiftly subsumed the dying branches. Then it budded. It produced blooms in such great quantities, in fact, that the flowers themselves outnumbered the leaves. Each time one died, another opened, over and over across a season far longer than she ever would have expected. The plant my grandmother had thought dead grew back so swiftly and so strong that it was more verdant than in any of the years that she had spent carefully tending to its every new shoot."

Kathryn hugged herself. "The storm," she said. "The storm tore out the dead wood. Allowed the plant to put energy into new shoots instead of maintaining ones that were past their usefulness. Those new branches bore flowers where the old ones could not."

"That is the conclusion my grandmother drew," Tuvok agreed.

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "You think that's what's happened to Chakotay and I? We've torn out the dead wood, and now in its place something fresh is growing?"

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "It is not for me to say, Captain. I was merely relating a story, one that it is perhaps possible to read as a cautionary tale. A suggestion that destruction can lead to renewal, if one has the fortitude to be patient enough – and the eyes to see where there might be growth that should not be ignored."

Kathryn nodded, lost in thought.

"I would suggest, Captain," Tuvok added, quietly, "that Commander Chakotay has both."

Kathryn looked at him sharply. "What makes you say that?"

The eyebrow. Always the eyebrow, rising as if it were a language in itself. "It was you who disconnected your last communication, Captain, not the Commander. If you had done so without regret, I suspect you would be asleep by now. As, indeed, you have been after every previous evening's conversation."

[TBC]


	8. Chapter 8

**Eight**

 **A/N:** Just wanted to say a huge thank you to those who have left such kind reviews, especially those reviewers who perhaps haven't done so before. It really does make a difference, particularly at the moment, when I feel as if my writing brain is mired in mud. Much love to people reading, I hope there's something in this chapter for you to enjoy.

* * *

For the rest of that night he lay and counted the light years between them, one after the other, rolling them through his mind like a building mantra, but still sleep would not come. When Chakotay rose the next morning it was with eyes full of grit and a head stuffed with cotton wool, clogged with thoughts of her. It wasn't a new sensation: in years past there had been plenty of nights where Kathryn Janeway had unwittingly occupied his mind to the point of distraction. But they were long ago. This was now. This was _again_. Moreover, this was not borne of mystery and curiosity, idle thoughts of things that were not and never could be known. It was, in fact, made of precisely the opposite and Chakotay did not know how to process it. He kept seeing the look in her eye before she had cut short their last call; that bright sadness, a tacit yet unspoken (always unspoken) acknowledgement of something that they had deliberately allowed to slip through their fingers.

Levering himself up from his tousled sheets, Chakotay sat on the edge of his bed for a moment, eyes cast towards the PADD he'd set down on the table that served as a desk. For hours he'd been on the verge of calling her back, but he hadn't. He wondered briefly where the bullish confidence of his youth had gone. There would have been a time where he'd have laughed at the idea of hesitating in such a situation. Wasn't that how he'd ended up dating a captain before now? Time was, if there were a woman he was attracted to, he'd simply make a play for her, whoever she was. No prevarication, no absurd dancing around the matter. If she said no, she said no, and that was that: plenty more fish in the sea, plenty more birds in the sky. Move on and leave no regrets behind. Life was too short to waste on what might have been.

But there was no moving on from _Voyager_. Or, it seemed, from Kathryn Janeway. He'd like to think it was merely his age, but knew it was more than that. It was, partly at least, what he assumed had been holding Kathryn back all these years: their forced proximity on the ship meant there was no chance of gaining respite or perspective from each other. Whatever happened between them personally, the next morning there they would always have to be, side by side on the bridge of that ship as if nothing had happened at all. There was no chance of a transfer if the relationship soured beyond all recognition – and the past months were testament to just how bitter such an eventuality could become. There was no opportunity for either of them to take leave for a week or two, step out of the common circle of their days to gather their thoughts and breathe different air. Whatever happened, they were trapped in a decaying orbit, held together by an external force that held them fast even as they were crushed within its confines, slowly crumbling but forever static in relation to each other.

 _Is that why this is happening now?_ He wondered. _We're apart – properly apart – for the first time since we met. Is this what a simple change in perspective has done to us? Made us see ourselves – each other – the way we did at the start?_

He knew this had to be the case. There was no other explanation, and besides Chakotay had seen the truth of it at work in other, more professional ways. His fury and disgust at what she had been willing to do to Lessing following their meeting with the _Equinox_ , while in no way removed entirely, had been tempered somewhat. For months the absolute opposition of their approach and the fallout from it had clamped around his mind like a vice with its mechanism rusted shut, immovable. But distance had succeeded in loosening where time had not. For the first time he had begun to think of her actions in a different light. In the early years of their journey Chakotay had privately thought of Kathryn as the greatest victim of their sojourn in the Delta Quadrant, both as a result of her personality (she was naturally hard on herself) and her position as captain (she was professionally required to be hard on herself). Her refusal to cut herself any slack at any time, her absolute insistence that as Captain she bore all the responsibility for their time here, the way she had continued to keep herself at several removes from the crew and therefore from the only society she had access to: at first these things had caused him concern. Yet over time, they had come to seem normal, even to him. He'd forgotten that the very fact they existed were part of what had lodged early as sympathy in his heart. Janeway so steadfastly held herself to be The Captain and never simply Kathryn that Chakotay had forgotten there was indeed a person called Kathryn Janeway beneath the uniform, and that she was as susceptible to damage as any other. He had forgotten, too, that such an isolated life inflicted a daily trauma all of its own, quite apart from the larger crises in which the ship so often found itself embroiled and for which she assumed the responsibility.

The only reason Kathryn Janeway was not suffering with Post Traumatic Stress was because she was in a constant state of trauma and had been so for six years. Chakotay didn't have to consult the EMH to know what the effects of such an experience had on the human psyche and behaviour. He had lived it himself, seen it himself, too many times to count even before he'd boarded _Voyager_.

He'd been too close to her to see it, Chakotay realised now, though it had been staring him in the face through her wide, blank eyes, eyes he'd barely recognised though he saw them so often. Realising it would not have changed his actions or his opposition to what she had done, but the aftermath… he could have done something then. But he'd begun walking away from her that day and had been steadily putting distance between them ever since. There had been so sign that she cared. He certainly hadn't.

Until now.

Chakotay got up and went into the elegant bathroom that was a staple of Elennial architecture. He stepped beneath the fountain they favoured instead of a shower and made sure the temperature was cool to the point of frigid, hoping the shock to his system would clear the fog from his mind.

It worked, after a fashion. He went about his day with her shadow pushed to the back of his mind, along with the knowledge that, within the bounds of the strange system that had developed between them since his absence from the ship, it was his 'turn' to call her that evening.

He wasn't sure he should, or even if he could. Yet if he didn't, what message would that send to her? What message did he even _want_ to send to her? Recognising the damage in her gave him a responsibility, one that – as with so many other situations in which the two of them found themselves – reached far beyond what he might choose to do on a purely personal level.

 _And isn't that,_ he mused, _exactly the problem with this relationship?_ Neither of them could ever be just themselves, not all the time they were on _Voyager_. There would always be larger issues that had to be taken into consideration, that gave both of them pause and forever made other things more important than the simple, basic question of whether or not they wanted to be together.

Normality was something that had been denied to them even before their first meeting, and everything that came after it was cast in the light of stars denoting a distance of such staggering magnitude that the small shadows of their own wants had been lost amid the understanding of it. For as long as they both lived, they would never have that. They _could_ never have that. That was just the way it was. There was no point in wishing it different. Life was, after all, too short. Address the issue and move on.

Chakotay had to call her. Didn't he? He had to push them past what had happened – or more accurately what had not happened - because if he didn't it could add more damage where there was already too much for one person to bear. He had to start taking some of that weight back again, or the ship could flounder as he had feared it would in the early days. Janeway had firmly shut the door to the tenor of the previous night's conversation by ending it, and that had to be his answer, didn't it? If their conversations had made him realise he loved her, still, in some way that went deeper than all the damage that this Quadrant and they themselves had inflicted on each other, then he had no choice. He had asked, again. She had said no, again. That invisible door had been reached, its handle touched, and in doing so she had redefined it as impenetrable.

And yet-

"All right," said Torres, appearing in front of him with her arms crossed and her jaw locked. "Are you going to tell me what's going on? Or shall I beat it out of you?"

He straightened up from where he'd been leaning against one of the stone consoles she'd been working on. "Excuse me, Lieutenant?"

B'Elanna narrowed her eyes. "Don't even try that one. There's no one here but you and me. Shift ended for everyone else ten minutes ago and the Elennials have gone bouncing off to some practice feast."

Chakotay looked around the workspace and realised that Torres was right. They were alone.

"So?" B'Elanna demanded, her arms still crossed. "I'm waiting."

Chakotay cleared his throat. "I'm fine. Just a little tired. I haven't been sleeping well since we got here, that's all."

"Doesn't explain where your mind has been all day." He looked at her sharply and she shook her head. "I'll bet no one else noticed, but then know one knows you like I do, do they? Something's got into your head. You've been more preoccupied than I've seen you in a long time. What is it? Worried we won't be done by the time we have to leave for the rendezvous?"

"I have faith in you and your team. You'll be ready."

"What is it, then?"

"It's personal, B'Elanna. Can we leave it at that?"

Torres dropped her arms to her sides. "Personal?"

Chakotay turned away from her, wishing he'd never said a thing. "Come on – if the rest of the team's done for the night, then so are you."

"Hey," she said, coming after him and catching his arm. "Look. Joking aside… I'm here. All right? If there's anything you do want to talk about."

Chakotay looked down at her and raised a slight smile. "Dating Paris is making you soft, Torres."

B'Elanna dropped her hand and crossed her arms again instead, her chin jutting in defiance. "And getting old is making you into a grumpy _p'tak_ , Chakotay."

"Watch it," he warned. "I know rank still doesn't mean a whole lot to you, but given that I'm your commanding officer, I'm the one holding the cards and I'm not above playing them."

She narrowed his eyes at him. Chakotay had the distinct feeling that B'Elanna was assessing his mood. All the former Maquis shared a special relationship, one that had only been strengthened by six years together aboard _Voyager_ , but Chakotay's connection to B'Elanna was cut from a different cloth still. He turned away, unwilling to give her a chance to voice whatever it was circling in her mind.

"Come on," he said. "Day's over."

"It's weird, isn't it," she said, falling into step beside him, "being off the ship for so long? I never thought I'd say this, but I miss it."

Chakotay glanced at her. "Well, it's the closest thing we've got to a home out here, and she's served us well for six years."

"I know," B'Elanna agreed, "but I spend every day aboard wishing I could just go out for a walk in fresh air. Here I've got as much of that as I could possibly want - but I'd rather just be back on _Voyager_."

Chakotay smiled slightly. "It's not the ship you're missing," he told her. "It's Tom."

He'd carried on walking for a few paces before realising that Torres had stopped. Chakotay turned to look back at her.

"What?"

"You said that as if it were a familiar feeling."

Chakotay shrugged. "Guess I'm a little homesick, too."

"For the ship?" she asked. "Or for someone on the ship?"

He started walking again. "You're fishing, B'Elanna."

"Only because I can see there's something to fish for."

"You've picked up entirely too many habits from Paris," he said, over his shoulder.

"If you count caring a bit too much about my commanding officers as a habit, then yes, maybe I have. He's been worried about you both."

Chakotay stopped again. He turned, hands finding his hips. "Both?"

"You and Captain Janeway. Ever since we found the _Equinox_ -"

"How did the Captain end up as part of this?"

B'Elanna gave him a look that managed to be both withering and exasperated at the same time. "Don't play dumb. It doesn't suit you and you know I know you better than that."

Chakotay sighed. "B'Elanna, I have a feeling that whatever you're getting at would be unprofessional even if you hadn't just involved the Captain in the conversation. Since you have, I'm going to insist that you drop this, immediately. Discussing a fellow officer, particularly a superior one, is distinctly inappropriate and I won't tolerate it. Understand?"

B'Elanna shook her head. To Chakotay's surprise, the look that settled on her face was a sad one. "Then how do you get to talk about it?" she asked. "When what you need to talk about is her, who do you get to talk to?"

Chakotay's heart stuttered slightly. "I don't know what you mean, Torres. I don't need to talk about anything or anyone, least of all the Captain. Now, can we drop this, please?"

B'Elanna looked as if she were about to say something else, so he raised a warning hand to ward her off. She sighed and nodded. "All right, all right. Consider it dropped."

"Good," Chakotay said, turning away again. "Let's go and get something to eat. I'm starving."

"I'll join you in a bit," Torres said, falling into step beside him again. "I've got to make a call first."

He frowned. "Oh?"

She looked a little sheepish, but squared her chin in defiance of her embarrassment. "Tom," she said, shortly. "We talk every night once we're both off duty. I'm sure you'll think it's stupid… but I don't sleep properly unless we do. I think it's the same for him. Anything could be happening on the ship and I just - I just like to talk to him. All right? I know that makes me a sad sap."

Chakotay smiled slightly, dipping his chin. "It doesn't," he told her. "As it happens, I know exactly what that's like."

B'Elanna stared at him for a second.

"Don't," he said, before she could say anything. "Just don't."

[TBC]


	9. Chapter 9

**Nine**

 **A/N:** An appeal to all you wonderful readers out there: if you've ever enjoyed one of my stories, if you've ever appreciated the time and effort that goes into producing them, here's a favour you can do for me in return: Please have a look at the Authors for Grenfell Tower charity auction (just Google it, or search the hashtag on Twitter for a link) that is currently going on in aid of all the families who lost everything in the horrendous Grenfell Tower fire. There are some amazing items up for grabs from truly wonderful authors, from signed limited edition books to manuscript critiques and advice. It's for a great cause, so even if you can't/don't want to bid yourself, do please share the living daylights out of the page. Thank you!

* * *

The Captain stepped into her quarters, pausing for a moment inside the doors as they closed behind her. Her rooms were as quiet as always, their silence broken only by _Voyager_ 's latent yet ever-present hum, which was so ubiquitous that Kathryn barely even noticed it anymore. This small, private section of the ship was the only home Janeway had known for six long years, yet still it didn't feel any more than temporary, despite the amount of time she spent here and though they represented the only true privacy she had. The footprint of a captain's quarters gifted her with far more space than the average crewman could ever dream of and in the early years Kathryn had tried to personalise it, hoping to ease the ache buried beneath her ribcage by creating a haven to which she could willingly retreat. Her rooms were peppered with modest belongings collected during the course of _Voyager_ 's journey, each of which held the memory of a place that she hoped one day to relate to friends and family back on Earth. _I found this shawl on Percik III. Isn't it beautiful? The yarn is spun from the fur of a native creature a little like a sheep – No! It's not dye, that's the natural colour. Isn't it wonderful? Wait, I've got some holoimages somewhere, I'll show them to you. The weaver wanted my combadge in return and I swear, if I hadn't been able to find something else to trade instead, I might have been tempted. Keep it, mom. I was thinking of you when I bought it, anyway. I knew you'd like it. I carried it with me through all those years and now I have brought it back to you and with it, a part of that absent, unknowable me._

There were other items, too, that Kathryn had brought aboard at the start and that were still surviving, though these were even fewer in number and in some cases had acquired an altered meaning during the course of their journey. The engagement ring that Mark had given her, for example, a plain gold band with a solitary diamond that suited her but that even before _Voyager_ she had never wore on duty. Of course Kathryn had brought it, but the shift that had started before the ship was flung into the Delta Quadrant had never really ended, and so from that point the ring had remained in its small velvet box, secreted in the drawer beside her Starfleet-issue bed until a single letter from home had rendered it an irrelevance, one whose glitter was painful to contemplate. Over the years it had shifted to the back of the drawer and lurked there still, taking up space in her quarters in a way that it had long since ceased to do in her heart.

She looked around, now, wondering at her lack of possessions, at the sum total of what she physically owned and how little there was to remind her of that other home, so distant and yet so longed for. She hadn't expected this mission to be a long trip, after all. Perhaps, if she had, she'd have brought more with her. But then, if she'd known, she'd never have come at all, would she?

Kathryn curled her fingers as she contemplated the truth of this thought. If she had known what _Voyager_ 's mission would bring, both to her and to this crew, of course she would have found away to avoid it. If she could go back, if she could change time, if she could flick a finger and alter history, of course she would. Wouldn't she? If she'd been given the choice in the first year of their journey, the answer would have been black and white, simple to the point of being nonsensical. But now, six years in, it was all so much more complicated.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and now she knew the Maquis, and now she knew that the Maquis were dead, all apart from this little pocket of resistance that had only survived because of that fateful encounter with the array she had ultimately chosen to destroy. A good proportion what was now her crew, her faithful, patient, loyal crew, wiped out or not because of a decision she did or did not make. Ayala, gone. B'Elanna, gone. Chakotay-

 _Chakotay._

Her fingers curled more firmly, becoming fists at her side.

 _It's missing a dog,_ she thought to herself, looking around. _A place can never really be a home until it's home to a dog._

This was a habit she had developed long ago, an almost Pavlovian response to thoughts of him arising in any other arena than the strictly professional. At the merest hint, she had trained her mind to skip over whatever was about to come next, to move her thoughts on to something unrelated and harmless. It was so automatic now that it wasn't even conscious, as borne out by the fact that right now, he was exactly whom she'd been intending to contemplate. Yet her mind was so used to deflection when it came to her first officer that it could not settle on the subject at hand.

Kathryn walked further into her quarters. She was tired and longed to shed the carapace of her uniform for something more comfortable but could not, not until she'd done what she intended to do next. It would surprise him, a call from her at this hour, when both their days were barely done. She had no idea whether or not Chakotay was intending to keep up his side of their recently developed ritual and make a call to her himself later, but she had no intention of waiting to find out.

This had to be dealt with now, properly. Kathryn knew she had to face it. She should have done exactly that the previous night, instead of allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the look of gentle intent on Chakotay's face as he'd watched her through the screen.

Crossing the room, she paused to look out at the stars, her stomach churning anew at the thought of the more recent conversation she'd conducted with Tuvok. What it must have cost him, to begin it. He was right, too – had anyone else made the same attempt she'd have closed it down with a swift reprimand and an even swifter ejection from her presence. But it was _Tuvok_ , whom she knew for a fact would prefer any tribulation up to and including immolation to broaching so personal a subject. That he had felt the need was what had given her pause enough to listen and then, later, to decide that she had to show the same grit herself. She'd done it before, after all.

Taking a breath, Kathryn sat at her desk, pulling in the chair so that she sat trim and straight before her console. She folded her hands in front of her and raised her chin.

"Computer," she said. "Open a sub-space channel with PADD designation _Voyager_ -59583. Audio and visual. Authorisation Janeway Lamda One."

The computer's tinny voice acknowledged her order. There was a pause of several seconds, during which Janeway stared at her reflection overlaying the Federation logo on the screen in front of her, schooling her expression into one of studied impassivity. _Tuvok_ , she thought, _would at least approve of that_.

Chakotay's face appeared on the screen, surprise only just visible in the crease of his brow. There was an almost imperceptible pause, in which she knew he'd taken in her uniform. He was, she was relieved to see, also still dressed in his.

"Captain," he greeted her, face as unsmiling as her own was as he seamlessly took his cue from her attire and rigid demeanour, just as she'd known he would.

There would be no softly muttered 'Kathryn' in _this_ conversation.

"Commander."

"Apologies for my delay in answering. I was just working on my daily report. And I wasn't… expecting a call."

She nodded. "I understand."

"Is there something I can do for you?" He watched her steadily, dark eyes shadowed but gaze unwavering, as if, although she'd taken him unawares with her call, he was not surprised by its tone and perhaps already held suspicions as to its content.

Janeway swallowed, forcing herself not to drop his gaze. "I wanted to let you know that I have contacted the Ellenial government," she told him. "They have extended me an invitation to visit their homeworld."

For the merest fraction of a second, Chakotay was so still that she wasn't even sure he was breathing. Then he blinked.

"You're… coming here?"

"Yes. You did say that B'Elanna could use the help?"

"I… did, Captain, yes."

"Very well, then. Tom Paris and I will be departing at 0600 hours ship time tomorrow. We calculate that our journey time to Ellenia Prime to be 13 hours 30 minutes, barring unforeseen circumstances."

"Tom Paris?"

"It seemed churlish not to allow him to accompany me, under the circumstances."

Chakotay nodded absently, distracted.

She took a breath and forced herself on. "Commander, I also believe that… you and I need to talk. It seems that our communications of late may have brought up issues that need to be addressed and," Janeway paused, untangling her fingers before re-tangling them again in a different position, "I believe that this needs to happen face to face. On, for want of a better word, neutral ground."

She looked up at him again, just in time to see the trace of a strangely sad smile ghost against his lips. "Understood, Captain."

Kathryn took a painful breath. She wasn't at all sure that he did and making it clear to him… how could she, really, when her mind kept dipping away from the truth of it all?

"Chakotay," she said, quietly, trying, _trying_ , "Chakotay…"

An expression flashed through his eyes then – a spark of abject surprise, tinted with something that turned her heart over right there in her chest.

"Sometimes," she said, "sometimes 'I can't' just means 'I don't know how'."

[TBC]


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

 **A/N:** First of all, a note for Annie – you are such an inspiration for offering your skills to the victims of the Grenfell tower blaze. Your message on the last chapter really moved me – it was an amazing gesture for you to make, and I am so grateful. Thank you!

Secondly, I'm very sorry for the delay in the appearance of this chapter. Various things conspired to keep me away. Thanks to anyone still willing to read, and thanks for the reviews I've had up until this point, they have been so lovely and very, very much appreciated.

* * *

The idea of seeing her again, face-to-face instead of through the medium of a PADD screen, was strange. Chakotay spent the fourteen hours between Janeway's surprise call and the shuttle's arrival trying not to let the meaning of both the visit and that short, unexpected and somewhat cryptic conversation crowd his thoughts. He attempted not to let himself over-analyse her brief words ( _Neutral ground. She'd used the term neutral ground, a phrase more suited to a battleground truce than_ \- _what…?_ ), trying instead to focus on organizing the necessaries for the Captain's visit.

The Ellenial were ecstatic ( _Though when weren't they?_ ) about Janeway's decision to join them, fussing over the correct way to welcome her from the shuttle and insisting that Chakotay approve their choice of rooms for her suite. He'd been on the verge of telling them that he was fairly sure the Captain of _Voyager_ would find whatever accommodations their hosts gave her perfectly adequate without the need for further thought or discussion. Then he'd realised that the suite the Ellenial had chosen was directly beside his own and the words had somehow died in his throat. Chakotay had walked around the open, airy, stone-carved space – which was furnished, as his own rooms were, in tones of sand and gold – and had known that Kathryn would love it. The Ellenial followed the forms of nature rather than imposing their own requirements on their surroundings, but the caves they inhabited were anything but primitive. He knew, without even asking, that Kathryn Janeway would find it fascinating to directly experience a culture so scientifically advanced, knowing they had managed to reach that advancement without disturbing their natural environment.

Chakotay stood looking out from the balcony of what would be her rooms, wishing that he could grant Kathryn a week or more here. It would have done her good, he realised, wondering why Janeway hadn't considered herself for this assignment in the first place. He knew the answer as soon as the thought had entered his head and it came to him accompanied by a pang of guilt that he hadn't even questioned her decision. It was the Captain's job to stay with the ship.

 _Yet she is coming here now,_ a voice whispered to him. _Neutral ground. Why does she need-_

"Commander Chakotay? Is everything to your satisfaction?"

Chakotay turned to his Ellenial companion – Abbas, a tall, willowy woman with hair with the colour and sheen of polished copper above faintly unsettling violet eyes - with a smile. "Absolutely."

"Do you think Captain Janeway will be comfortable here? We are eager for her stay to be a pleasant one, especially since it is to be so short. If there is anything else you can think of that would aid that pursuit…" Abbas spread her hands, long fingers extended, "please do let me know."

As Chakotay cast another glance around the rooms, a thought occurred to him, absurd enough to make him smile at himself. His companion caught the expression.

"Commander?" Abbas prompted, her head tilted attentively. "You've thought of something, I see."

He shook his head. "A daft notion, Abbas, and one to ignore."

"No – please. If we can accommodate you or your captain, it would give us great pleasure, however… daft… the notion."

Chakotay hesitated, then glanced around the suite again. "I've seen some of your people with a creature called a _jot_ ," he began.

Abbas beamed. "Yes, commander. They are wonderful animals, very loving, very loyal. We keep them as pets. I have one myself."

He nodded. "There are similar such animals on Captain Janeway's home planet. I know that she misses her own," he paused, knowing how ridiculous the request he was about to make would sound. He needn't have worried, however. Abbas had already seen what he was about to ask.

"Say no more," the Ellenial said, resting one hand on his arm with another gleaming smile. "My own jot Tanna has just weaned her latest litter. I am sure she will lend your Captain one of her jotlings for the short days of her stay. And it will get my children used to letting them go: I suspect they would like to keep all of them, which we _definitely_ cannot."

Chakotay smiled. "Thank you, Abbas. You are very kind."

"Not at all, Commander. We all wish there was more we could do to aid you and your crew. We praise your bravery and are amazed by your determination. The whole of Ellenia has been caught by the romantic tale of _Voyager_ 's long journey home."

Chakotay glanced away. "There's not often much romance to it."

Abbas tilted her head, acknowledging the point. "And so every opportunity for respite offered is one to grasp with both hands, is it not?"

He smiled. "You're right, of course. In my duties as first officer, I try to get the crew to take exactly that attitude."

"But not so with Captain Janeway?"

"She has great responsibilities and feels them keenly. Time… is not often her friend."

Abbas returned his smile. "Then I am even more pleased that she has decided to join us. I think she must be a remarkable woman, your Captain Janeway. I am beyond honoured that I will have a chance to meet her."

Later, as the shuttle came into land, Chakotay stood between B'Elanna and Abbas amid a larger knot of Ellenial dignitaries. Paris and Janeway came into view, heads and shoulders small in the cockpit, just visible through the craft's viewscreen. He clasped his hands behind his back, standing somewhat to attention. Beside him, he felt B'Elanna shift, too, and realised that this awkwardness he felt was shared, though perhaps for different reasons.

How would she look at him, in that first glance? He knew her well enough to be sure that whatever personal issues she may want to address would be buried deep beneath the façade of her professionalism, at least at this particular juncture. Nonetheless, Chakotay wondered which Janeway he was about to be confronted with. Would it be the one with whom he had so unexpectedly become reacquainted by distance? Or the one that time had taken from him with a creeping brutality that he had – and he now readily admitted this to himself – been quietly complicit in accepting?

Would he be able to read her intentions from one look, as he had so often before? And if he could, what would he see there?

Abbas was the first to step forward as the shuttle's hatch opened. Her greeting was effusive, an enthusiasm the Captain took in her stride and returned with a warm smile and a bright look that belied the curl Chakotay saw in her fingers. She was tense about something, he could tell, however well she was hiding it from everyone else.

When she turned towards him, he knew what it was.

 _Him._

* * *

They had no time to talk, at least not purely between themselves. What discussions they had were concerning progress and logistics. Chakotay would have expected nothing less and would have been worried to receive anything more from the commanding officer he knew so well. Janeway launched into work with B'Elanna on the Elennial systems with barely a space to draw breath, yet still somehow managed to accommodate the stream of Ellenial visitors eager to meet and talk with her. Chakotay, meanwhile, acquainted Paris with an equivalent officer in the Elennial air force and then continued his role as he had since the team from _Voyager_ had first arrived.

He watched Janeway from across the room in which they both worked, the way he had watched her in those early days on _Voyager_ 's bridge. Learning her anew, despite there being every indication that nothing had changed. _What had you been expecting?_ he asked himself, and was unsurprised that his answer was _Exactly this. To work as we have always worked. To know each other, while not knowing._

Yet something was different. He sensed it, though her face was turned away from him and her attention was firmly on the task at hand.

 _No, not something different,_ his mind supplied, correcting him. _Something returned._

He knew it for sure when, as he passed her a PADD she had asked for, their hands brushed together. It was just barely a touch of skin against skin, but in its aftermath he felt something that he hadn't felt in years, a frisson skating between them, a spark no less electric for its strange familiarity. She hesitated, just for a second, glancing up at him so quickly, so briefly, that it would have been easy to discount as nothing. Perhaps, just weeks ago, it would have been.

But still, they had no time alone in which such things could be discussed, and Kathryn showed no indication of any desire to find any. The working day segued into more meetings and then seamlessly on into the Ellenial's great feast. Chakotay watched his Captain, pleased to see her enjoyment, gradually resigning himself to the fact that this was it. This was as close to a conversation as they were going to get, this quiet, side-by-side companionship, a return to a past period in their dual journey before bitterness had obscured their path. It was enough, he decided, and besides, it was better than he had hoped for.

Distance had apparently reminded each of them of what they'd had, once, of the value of it, the importance, and that was a precious enough thing to regain. Asking for more, Chakotay recognised, would be a mistake. Their circumstances aboard _Voyager_ had not changed. Neither had Kathryn's character, nor her determination to put the ship first. He knew her. He knew her so well that whatever words to this effect she could have used in speech would surely be redundant, and he had no intention of putting her through the strain of actually having to say them.

They were on neutral ground and had signed a silent truce. Distance had begun to heal them. Let time now continue it.

They walked back to their quarters together. Kathryn had yet to visit hers: Abbas had offered her a tour, but in true Janeway style she had wanted to prioritise work and had merely asked for the coordinates so that she could beam a fresh set of clothes from the shuttle. It had made him smile, the fact that what he'd assumed of her when asked had been so true – in Kathryn's mind, the circumstances of her brief stay were inconsequential. She wasn't the type of Captain to demand luxury, however much she might enjoy it when it was voluntarily presented.

Silence reigned between them, companionable and yet with something unspoken at its edges. At one point Kathryn paused – a falter in her step accompanied by a quick look cast in his direction – and Chakotay had the sense that there was something she wanted to say. Whatever it was, she reigned it in. They continued on, though the silence now had a pensive, heavy quality to it, so pregnant that when they reached her door Chakotay decided to give her one last opportunity to speak.

"This is you," he said, indicating the door.

She looked up at him, and in that instant he was struck by so many memories of her in this same position, one overlaying another overlaying another. Years of her looking up at him, her face tilted to meet his eye: that first time she had lifted her chin in the face of his Maquis anger; of her standing before him in a nightgown with a ruined brownie at her feet; with anger during the countless times they had argued; with shock as she noted that his attention had wandered to her bare shoulder; with despair; with determination; with defiance; so many times with the laughter he loved so much to hear, that _smile_ ; with fury; with resignation – too many instances to count, and he had missed it, he realised now, with a ferocity that could have stopped his heart.

"I'm glad you came, Captain," he told her, softly. "I hope you think it was worth the long journey."

Her gaze dropped to his chest. He wondered what she was thinking, what words she was processing in that complicated mind.

"It was," she said, eventually, looking back up at him with bright eyes. "This is a fascinating planet, and the Elennial have an extraordinary culture. Thank you, Chakotay – for telling me to come."

There was a brief silence and he felt it again, the same pulse of electricity that had passed between them earlier in the day and before that, through the PADD screen.

"Kathryn-"

"Chakotay-"

Their names stumbled over each other, tangling together and falling into the quiet chasm between them that, despite everything, Chakotay found he wanted to lean across. He wanted to trace that electric link between them back to its source. Could she see it in his eyes, the kiss he was contemplating at that moment? Could she read him as well now as she had on that night years ago when she'd been the one to close the gap? But they had come this far on the path back towards each other. To jeopardise it now…

What had she said during that blur of a call? He'd focused on 'neutral ground', but it hadn't been the only thing she'd said, had it? _Sometimes 'I can't' means, 'I don't know how'_. So should he push it? Should _he_ be the one to-

"I – should get some rest," Janeway said, her voice a husk, a whisper. "It's been a long day, and tomorrow will be more of the same. For you too, I'm sure. Goodnight, Commander."

 _Too late_. Either way, too late.

Chakotay smiled. "Goodnight, Captain," he said, softly. "Sleep well."

She closed her door behind her and seconds later he was doing the same. The sound of the ocean rolled through the open doors that lead to his balcony. Chakotay shut his eyes, levelling his breathing. After a moment he opened them again, and walked into the calm of the room. He unzipped his uniform jacket and pulled off his tank top until only his t-shirt remained. He stood, quietly, trying to let it all drift away with the salt on the cool breeze.

There was a knock at his door.

It took him a moment to respond. Then he dropped his discarded clothing on the bed and went to answer it.

Kathryn Janeway was standing on his threshold with a leggy bundle of brown fur in her arms. It took him a moment to remember the jotling that Abbas had promised. The creature stirred, lifting a small head to look at him with bright, dark eyes above a tiny blunt snout. It looked for all the world like a puppy. Janeway looked up at him with an unreadable expression.

"This was you," she said, her voice rough. "This was _you_."

He didn't know what to say, suddenly fearful that what he'd thought might bring her a modicum of joy had in fact provided something entirely different and completely unwelcome.

"Abbas wanted to know what might make your stay more pleasant," he told her, "and this was what sprang into my mind. But I can get her to take it back."

Janeway looked down at the animal for a moment. Then she looked away down the corridor, nodding, her jaw tensing and releasing as if she were trying to work out what to say. Then she looked up at him again.

"Can I come in?"

[TBC]


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

 **A/N:** Thank you so much to everyone who has read and reviewed!

* * *

"Can I come in?"

Her heart was beating such a fast, uneven rhythm that Kathryn thought the creature she carried against her chest must surely be able to feel it thundering through her ribcage. She held the jotling a little tighter, its small body a warm weight, a welcome buoy in the rising tide of nerves threatening to drown her.

Chakotay was looking down at her with a frank intensity that did nothing to help her equilibrium. He blinked at her words and then stepped back.

"Please," he said, raising one hand to welcome her into his suite.

Janeway walked past him into rooms that closely resembled her own, though in truth she'd barely had time to register the form of the ones next door before leaving them again. She'd entered her suite preoccupied with intense frustration at herself. She was here to talk to Chakotay, wasn't she, or at least that was one of the reasons she had come all this way. Yet she couldn't bring herself to open that discussion, not even when he was standing mere inches away, waiting, clearly leaving her yet another opening to begin that dialogue. She, Captain Janeway of the lost ship _Voyager_ , she who had defeated the Borg, she who had quelled the Hirogen, she who had beaten death on more occasions than was reasonable to count, could not face a simple, direct conversation with another human being.

 _You've done it before, for god's sake,_ she'd told herself, as she'd leant back against her closed door with her eyes shut, listening to him pace away to his own rooms. _With him, no less._ _It's not even as if this is uncharted territory._

Except that it was. Oh, it was. And how could she say all the things she needed to when he looked at her like _that_ , with eyes more vocal than the most accomplished of symphonies? When they were back _there_ , where every almost-touch came with a spark she hadn't ever sought or expected, but that they both seemed somehow incapable of quenching? When just standing in front of him in any situation other than pure duty felt like teetering on the edge of a cliff that she wanted him to drag her over?

She was too controlled, too ruled by her head. He was too expressive, too ruled by his heart. And so between them they had quickly reached same impasse they'd first ground to a halt at years ago.

 _Let the dust settle_ , she'd told herself, still leaning against the door. _It really has been a long day. Perhaps tomorrow will bring-_

Her excuses had been interrupted by a snuffling sound, followed by a noise like a tiny, mournful howl. Startled, Kathryn had pushed away from the door, moving cautiously into the room. When the sound came again she located its source as coming from the bed. On it had been laid a thick blanket, and sitting on the blanket was a very small creature. It saw her coming and howled again, though howl was really too generous a term for the miniature and somewhat comical noise the dog-like animal was emitting.

"Oh!" Kathryn had crossed to it quickly, whereupon it had begun wiggling its ears, a gesture she recognised as resembling the wagging of a tail. "What are _you_ doing here?"

The puppy – because at present she didn't know what else to call it – stood up on wobbly legs, hankering for attention. Kathryn had scooped it up, wondering whether this was just a normal part of welcoming a guest in the Ellennial tradition. But Chakotay would have mentioned it if it had been, wouldn't he?

The animal snuggled against her, replacing the loss of its mother and siblings with the warmth of her body. It had brought a smile to her face, the sensation of a living thing in her arms. _What a coincidence,_ she'd thought, _that just yesterday, on_ Voyager _, I was thinking that what my quarters needed was a dog, and here I am today-_

But of course it wasn't a coincidence. Of _course_ it wasn't. And she had known then, in a flash, why this creature was here, who it was that had known her well enough – _cared_ about her enough – to understand that part of what had been missing from her heart for six years was the easy, undemanding companionship of a dog.

She'd been out of her door before she'd even had time to think of what she was doing, or what she was going to say. How could he be this person? How could a man that had seen so much, _lost_ so much, still find the space in his mind to store this tiny piece of knowledge about her?

 _Why are you so good to me?_

Now she stood at the centre of his rooms, clutching an alien pet, completely adrift.

"I'm sorry, Captain, if the jotling was an unwelcome surprise," Chakotay said, softly.

She turned to look at him. He seemed to be staying a good distance.

"A jotling?" she said, aware just how rough her voice had remained. "That's what the Ellenial call them, is it?"

He gave a brief nod, his gaze still intense. She could see the tension in the muscles of his arms, bare beneath the short sleeves of his regulation T-shirt. Looking at him was too much and so she looked down at the jotling instead, stroking its head. It snaked out a small pink tongue to lick her hand and Kathryn felt her heart constrict and expand, a painful simultaneous pulse as if it might finally be stretched beyond the bounds of what a person should be expected to bear.

"No," she said. "It was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. It…" she took a breath, and looked up again. "Chakotay, we need to talk."

It seemed to take him a moment to move. "All right," he said, moving towards the large couch that delineated the living area. "Why don't we sit? Can I get you a drink?"

"Some water would be welcome. Thank you." She went to sit down. Part of her wanted to keep the jotling on her lap for this exchange, a protective barrier to hide behind. Instead she set it down on the floor. It wandered off to explore and she watched it cautiously sniffing around the perimeter of the room until Chakotay came back with the water she had asked for.

He sat down at the other end of the couch, turned towards her. She took a mouthful of water and then put down the glass, trying to work out how to begin. Silence reigned between them, broken only by the snuffling of the jotling's explorations.

"Chakotay-" she began, at last, and then stopped, failing. She looked up at him. "I don't know how to do this."

Chakotay watched her, eyes dark and solemn. "Just say whatever it is you want to say, Kathryn."

She made a sound in her throat, shook her head. "You make it sound easy."

"It is that easy. And…" he smiled wryly, though without bitterness. "You've done it before."

"No," she said. "No. I _haven't._ I-" she swallowed the beating of her heart. "I've never done this, I've never said _this_. Not out loud, not to you. Not even in my head, to myself. And I don't know how. I don't know-" she broke off and risked a glance in his direction. The expression on his face had changed, a look of shock mixed with something else, something that ghosted like a charge between them, so visceral that she had to get away from it.

Kathryn stood up, pacing away from him with her back turned. When she turned back again Chakotay was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together, every ounce of attention fixed solely on her. She shook her head, drowning, struggling to surface in a riptide she'd been fighting to survive for years.

"I didn't expect you," she said, staring at her hands instead of at his face. "Out of everything about this mission that came as a shock, you were the biggest blindside of all."

She let the silence hang for a moment or two, trying to formulate words that would lend shape to this, this nebulous, unspoken, desperately spurned concept that had loomed around her for so long.

"They warn you about it in captaincy training," she went on, eventually. "About… attraction between officers. The Fleet recognises that it is an inevitable occurrence, especially on long missions. They teach new captains how to look out for it, how to deal with it when it arises. They offer advice on avoiding situations, how to… how to limit contact. How to move past it, how to concentrate on what's waiting for you at home." Kathryn swallowed. "But _Voyager_ wasn't supposed to be on a long mission. More than anything I wanted to be a good captain for my crew. I wanted to complete my assignment successfully. I was engaged. I was _happy_. And I never… I _never_ expected _you_."

Kathryn could feel him looking at her, a sensation as tangible as heat. She didn't think Chakotay had moved a muscle since she'd begun her halting explanation. Part of her wanted to bolt for the door, to put the distance between them that her Starfleet training had told her was the right course of action. But they'd tried that already, hadn't they?

"I did everything I was trained to do," she said, trying to keep her voice level, trying not to let it betray how she felt inside, quivering like the last leaf of fall in the Indiana of her childhood. "I tried to behave as if _Voyager_ was on a standard mission. What else could I do? There was no other rulebook for me to follow. But…"

"But?"

After his prolonged silence, the sound of his voice was a shock. She looked up to find that Chakotay was on his feet.

"It didn't kill the attraction," she said. "It killed something else, instead. Something… bigger, more important. Or at least, I thought it had. And then everything else took over anyway and I thought it was dead and buried. Until-"

"Until we were apart," he supplied.

Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. Kathryn looked down at her hands again with a brief nod. "Tuvok thinks-"

" _Tuvok_?"

Kathryn looked up with a slight laugh. "He's the reason I'm here."

"Tuvok?" Chakotay repeated, with no less incredulity. He'd taken a step closer.

She shrugged one shoulder. "One reason, anyway."

"What does Tuvok think?" Chakotay asked, softly.

He took another step towards her. Kathryn's heart reacted, boiling in terror and, _god help me,_ she thought, anticipation. It was hard to breathe.

She shook her head, once, trying to clear it. _Get your chin up. Face it. Face_ him. "He told me a story."

Chakotay quirked one eyebrow, a trace of amusement in his eyes. "Did he? I approve."

"A real one," she added.

"He's a bolder man than me, then. What was it?"

"A story about how devastation isn't always the end. Sometimes it can be a new beginning."

Chakotay nodded. "And that's what made you come to Ellenia?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Kathryn shook her head. Talking about what Tuvok had pointed out to her was just obfuscation, a delaying tactic. If she didn't do this now she never would. She was shaking now. He must be able to see it.

"Chakotay. I didn't come to Ellenia. I came to you."

He stayed where he was, eight paces away, no more, watching her. The adrenaline surged through her then bleached away, leaving her blank inside, still shaking.

"You," he said, softly, "are the bravest woman I have or will ever meet."

She shuddered a laugh, letting go of a long, awful breath. "Not in this," she said. "This is-"

Chakotay started moving again then. He walked towards her, slowly, and with each step he took she felt the panic building in her chest, the urge to flee. She forced herself to stand her ground, to wait for him to reach her. When he did, Chakotay took her left hand. It had curled the way it always did in crisis. He laid her fingers flat against his palm, stroking his thumb over her knuckles. They stood like that for a while, looking down at their joined hands. Then he reached out his other to tip her face up towards his.

Looking him in the eye was painful, because what she saw there she had been hiding from for six years. Confronting it was like laying bare her soul, not just to him, but to herself. This was against everything her training had taught her, against everything she had been trying to do in all the time they had known each other. But they had been here before and she'd tried the other path. All it had done was walk them into a storm front that she couldn't gamble on surviving a second time around.

Chakotay stroked her cheek, studying her face. Whatever was between them was already far beyond mere idle attraction. They both knew it. They had done their best to tear it down in too many ways to count, both deliberately and by accident, and it was still there. It wasn't going to go away.

 _Why,_ she asked herself, _would I ever want it to?_

Still, when he leaned in she tensed, the hand held in his coiling involuntarily. He stopped, eyes fixed on hers, but didn't move away. Patient. Waiting. She let out a tiny breath, trying to shake off the invisible shackles. She let her fingers open, let them tangle against his. Chakotay leaned in again and kissed her, gently. Once. Twice. Three times, caution slowly fading. Kathryn slipped her free arm around his hips as he gathered her in, still holding her hand, bringing it up to clasp it against his chest. His body was warm against hers, solid: familiar and at the same time entirely unknown.

They stayed like that for a long time, lost in each other. But found, too.

Later, they stood on the balcony, looking down at the waves crashing against the cliff below. There had been no tearing off of clothes, no wild romp on his Ellenial bed. Neither had needed to rein the other in, to suggest it might be a good idea to take this slowly. They knew each other too well.

Kathryn leaned back against Chakotay's chest, her head beneath his chin. He moved one arm from around her to stroke her hair away from his face.

"I don't know how to do this," she said. "I don't know how to be your Captain and your lover."

She felt his arms tighten on her at that last word. He pressed his lips into her hair. "I know. We'll figure it out."

Kathryn pulled away enough to turn in his arms. The wind played with her hair. She could taste the salt of the ocean on her lips. She felt at peace here, in a way she hadn't for years. Yet it could never be home.

"I don't know how this will feel. Once we're back on _Voyager_."

He smiled. "I know that, too."

"What if I can't-"

Chakotay silenced her with a kiss. It was long, slow and full of promise. When he pulled away, he was still smiling. "You'll find a way. _We'll_ find a way." He rubbed one thumb along her jaw, shaking his head slightly. "I never expected you, either."

A whine came from somewhere behind him. Kathryn took a look around his left bicep. The jotling was sitting on the balcony step, looking up at them, its small head tipped to one side. She extricated herself from the warmth of Chakotay's arms and picked it up, cuddling it beneath her chin. The animal rubbed its head against her neck.

"What do you think?" she asked, turning back to Chakotay. "Will our hosts let me keep it?"

Chakotay crossed his arms. She let herself take notice of the way his muscles bunched as he did so. "I'm not sure I like that idea," he said, his tone lightly playful.

"Oh?"

He moved towards her again, catching her face between his palms. "If you've got a pet for a companion, you might find you don't want me anymore after all."

"I've wanted you for six years," Kathryn said, before she could tell herself not to. "I don't think there will ever be a time when I don't want you."

She just had time to enjoy the expression on his face. And then there was no distance left between them at all.

 **[END]**


End file.
